| 125. Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas: Self-Knowledge as Portrayed in the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation
17 Sep 1910, Basel Translated by Ruth Pusch, Hans Pusch |
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| 125. Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas: Self-Knowledge as Portrayed in the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation
17 Sep 1910, Basel Translated by Ruth Pusch, Hans Pusch |
|---|
Many of you know that recently in Munich we repeated last year's performance of Schuré's drama, The Children of Lucifer. We also put our efforts into the production of a Rosicrucian Mystery in which we tried in a variety of ways to bring to expression what is living in our movement. For one thing, it was meant to show how the life of anthroposophy and its impulses can flow into art, into artistic form. Besides that, we should be aware that this Rosicrucian Mystery contains many of our spiritual scientific teachings that perhaps only in future years will be discerned. Please do not misunderstand me when I say that if people would exert themselves to some degree to read what is in it—not between the lines but right in the words themselves, though certainly in a spiritual sense—if people would exert themselves during the next few years to try to work with the drama, I would not have to give any more lectures for a long time. Much could be discovered in it that otherwise I would have to put forth as one or another theme in lectures. It is much more practical, however, to do this together as a group rather than as single individuals. It is fortunate in one sense that everything that lives in spiritual science also exists in such a form. In relation to the Rosicrucian Mystery I should today like to speak about certain peculiarities of human self- knowledge. For this we will have to remind ourselves how the individuality living in the body of Johannes Thomasius brings about a characterization of himself. Therefore, I wish to start my lecture with a recitation of the scenes from the Rosicrucian Mystery that portray the self-knowledge of Johannes. SCENE TWO A place in the open; rocks and springs. The whole surroundings are to be thought of as within the soul of Johannes Thomasius. What follows is the content of his meditation.
Johannes:
Johannes
Maria
Johannes
Maria
Johannes
SCENE NINEThe same placed as in Scene Two
Johannes
Maria
Johannes
Maria
Johannes
In these scenes two levels of development, two steps in the unfolding of our souls, are shown. Now please do not find it strange when I say that I do not mind interpreting this Rosicrucian Mystery just as I have interpreted other pieces of literature in our group. What I have often said about other poetry can also be brought before our souls in a lively, spontaneous way by this drama. In fact, I have never failed to point out that a flower knows little, indeed, of what someone who is looking at it will find in it; yet, whatever he finds is contained in it. And in speaking about Faust, I explained that the poet did not necessarily know or feel everything in the words he was writing down that later would be discovered in them. I can assure you that nothing of what afterward I could say about the Rosicrucian Mystery, and that I know now is in it, was in my conscious mind as I wrote down the various scenes. The scene-pictures grew one by one, just like the leaves of a plant. One cannot bring forth a character by first having an idea and then turning this into a concrete figure. It was continually interesting to me how each scene grew out of the others preceding it. Friends who knew the earlier parts said that it was remarkable how everything came about quite differently from what one could have imagined. This Mystery Drama exists now as a picture of human evolution in the development of a single person. I want to emphasize that true feeling makes it impossible to throw a cloak of abstractions around oneself in order to present anthroposophy; every human soul is different from every other and, at its core, must be different, because each one undergoes the experience of his own development. For this reason, instruction to the many can provide only general directions. One can give the complete truth only by applying it to a single human soul, to a soul that reveals its human individuality in all its uniqueness. If, therefore, anyone should consider the figure of Johannes Thomasius in such a way as to transfer the specific description of that figure to general theories of human development, it would be absolutely incorrect. If he believed that he would experience exactly what Johannes Thomasius experienced, he would be quite mistaken. For while in the widest sense what Johannes Thomasius had to undergo is valid for everyone, in order to have the same specific experiences one would have to be Johannes Thomasius. Each person is a “Johannes Thomasius” in his own fashion. Everything in the drama is presented, therefore, in a completely individual way. Through this, the truth portrayed by the particular figures brings out as clearly as possible the development of the soul of a human being. At the beginning, Thomasius is shown in the physical world, but certain soul-happenings are hinted at that provide a wide basis for such development, particularly an experience at a somewhat earlier time when he deserted a girl who had been lovingly devoted to him. Such things do take place, but this individual happening has a different effect on a man who has resolved to undertake his own development. There is one deep truth necessary for him who wants to undergo development: self-knowledge cannot be achieved by brooding within oneself but only through diving into the being of others. Through self- knowledge we must learn that we have emerged from the cosmos. Only when we give ourselves up can we change into another Self. First of all, we are transformed into whatever was close to us in life. When at first Johannes sinks more deeply into himself and then plunges in self-knowledge into another person, into the one to whom he has brought bitter pain, we see this as an example of the experience of oneself within another, a descent into self-knowledge. Theoretically, one can say that if we wish to know the blossom, we must plunge into the blossom, and the best method of acquiring self-knowledge is to plunge again, but in a different way, into happenings we once took part in. As long as we remain in ourselves, we experience only superficially whatever takes place. In contrast to true self-knowledge, what we think of other persons is then mere abstraction. For Thomasius at first, what other people have lived through becomes a part of him. One of them, Capesius, describes some of his experiences; we can observe that they are rooted in real life. But Thomasius takes in more. He is listening. His listening is singular; later, in SceneEight, we will be able to characterize it. It is really as if Thomasius' ordinary Self were not present. Another deeper force appears, as though Thomasius were creeping into the soul of Capesius and were taking part in what is happening from there. That is why it is so absolutely important for Thomasius to be estranged from himself. Tearing the Self out of oneself and entering into another is part and parcel of self-knowledge. It is noteworthy, therefore, that what he has listened to in Scene One, Thomasius says, reveals:
Why has it made a “nothing” of him? Because through self-knowledge he has plunged into these other persons. Brooding in your own inner self makes you proud, conceited. True self-knowledge leads, first of all, by having to plunge into a strange Self, into suffering. In Scene One Johannes follows each person so strongly that when he listens to Capesius he becomes aware of the words of Felicia within the other soul. He follows Strader into the loneliness of the cloister, but at first this has the character of something theoretical. He cannot reach as far as he is later led, in Scene Two, through pain. Self-knowledge is deepened by the meditation within his inner Self. What was shown in Scene One is shown changed in Scene Two through self-knowledge intensified from abstraction to a concrete imagination. Those well-known words, which we have heard through the centuries as the motif of the Delphic Oracle, bring about a new life for this man Johannes, though at first it is a life of estrangement from himself. Johannes enters, as a knower-of-himself, into all the outer phenomena. He finds his life in the air and water, in the rocks and springs, but not in himself. All the words that we can let sound on stage only from outside are actually the words of his meditation. As soon as the curtain rises, we have to confront these words, which would sound louder to anyone through self-knowledge than we can dare to produce on the stage. Thereafter, he who is learning to know himself dives into the other beings and elements and thus learns to know them. Then in a terrible form the same experience he has had earlier appears to him. It is a deep truth that self-knowledge, when it progresses in the way we have characterized, leads us to see ourselves quite differently from the way we ever saw ourselves before. It teaches us to perceive our “I” as a strange being. Man believes his own outer physical sheath to be the closest thing to himself. Nowadays, when he cuts a finger, he is much more connected with the painful finger than when, for instance, a friend hurts him with an unjust opinion. How much more does it hurt a modern person to cut his finger than to hear an unjust opinion! Yet he is only cutting into his bodily sheath. To feel our body as a tool, however, will come about only through self- knowledge. Whenever a person grasps an object, he can feel his hand to some degree as a tool. This, too, he can learn to feel with one or another part of his brain. The inward feeling of his brain as instrument comes about at a certain level of self-knowledge. Specific places within the brain are localized. If we hammer a nail, we know we are doing it with a tool. We know that we are also using as tool one or another part of the brain. Through the fact that these things are objective and can become separate and strange to us, we come to know our brain as something quite separate from us. Self-knowledge requires this sort of objectivity as regards our body; gradually our outer sheath becomes as objective to us as the ordinary tools we use. Then, as soon as we have made a start at feeling our bodily sheath as separate object, we truly begin to live in the outside world. Because a person feels only his body, he is not clear about the boundary between the air outside and the air in his lungs. All the same, he will say that it is the same air, outside and inside. So it is with everything, with the blood, with everything that belongs to the body. But what belongs to the body cannot be outside and inside—that is mere illusion. It is only through the fact that we allow the internal bodily nature to become outward that in truth it finds a further life out in the rest of the world and the cosmos. In the first scene recited today there was an effort to express the pain of feeling estranged from oneself—the pain of feeling estranged because of being outside and within all the other things. Johannes Thomasius' own bodily sheath seems like a person outside himself. But just because of that—that he feels his own body outside—he can see the approach of another body, that of the young girl he once deserted. It comes toward him; he has learned how to speak with the very words of the other being. She says to him, whose Self has widened out to her:
Then guilt, very much alive, rises up in the soul when, plunging our own Self into another and attaching ourselves to the pain of this other being, the pain is spoken out. This is a deepening, an intensifying. Johannes is truly within the pain, because he has caused it. He feels himself dissolving into it and then waking up again. What is he actually experiencing? When we try to put all this together, we will find that the ordinary, normal human being undergoes something similar only in the condition we call kamaloka. The initiate, however, has to experience in this world what the normal person experiences in the spiritual world. Within the physical body he must go through what ordinarily is experienced outside the physical body. All the elements of kamaloka have to be undergone as the elements of initiation. Just as Johannes dives into the soul to whom he has brought such grief, so must the normal human being in kamaloka dive into the souls to which he has brought pain. It is just as if a slap in the face has to come back to him; he has to feel the same pain. The only difference is that the initiate experiences this in the physical body, and other people after death. The one who goes through this here will afterward live otherwise in kamaloka. But even all that one undergoes in kamaloka can be so experienced that one does not become entirely free. It is a most difficult task to become completely free. A man feels as if he were chained to his physical conditions. In our time one of the most important elements for our development—not yet so much in the Greco-Roman epoch but especially important nowadays—is that the human being must experience how infinitely difficult it is to become free of himself. Therefore, a notable initiation experience is described by Johannes as feeling chained to his own lower nature; his own being seems to be a creature to which he is firmly fettered:
This belongs to self-knowledge; it is a secret of self- knowledge. We should try to understand it correctly. A question about this secret could be phrased like this: have we in some way become better human beings by becoming earth dwellers, by entering into our physical sheaths, or would we be better by remaining in our inner natures and throwing off those sheaths? Superficial people, taking a look at life in the spirit, may well ask: why ever do we have to plunge down into a physical body? It would be much easier to stay up there and not get into the whole miserable business of earthly existence. For what reason have the wise powers of destiny thrust us down here? Perhaps it helps our feelings a little to say that for millions and millions of years the divine, spiritual powers have worked on the physical body. Because of this, we should make more out of ourselves than we have the strength to do. Our inner forces are not enough. We cannot yet be what the gods have intended for us if we wish to be only what is in our inner nature, if our outer sheaths do not work some corrections in us. Life shows us that here on earth man is put into his physical sheaths and that these have been prepared for him by the beings of three world epochs. Man has now to develop his inner nature. Between birth and death, he is bad; in Devachan he is a better creature, taken up by divine, spiritual beings who shower him with their own forces. Later on, in the Vulcan epoch, he will be a perfect being. Now on the earth he is a being who gives way to this or that desire. Our hearts, for one thing, are created with such wisdom that they can hold out for decades against the excesses we indulge in, such as drinking coffee. What man can be today through his own will is the way he travels through kamaloka. There he has to learn what he can be through his own will, and that is certainly nothing very good. Whenever man is asked to describe himself, he cannot use the adjective “beautiful.” He has to describe himself as Johannes does in Scene Two:
Our inner nature stretches flexibly within our bodily sheaths and is hidden from us. When we approach initiation, we learn really to see ourselves as a kind of raging dragon. Therefore, these words are drawn up out of the deepest perception; they are words of self-knowledge, not of self-brooding:
At bottom, they are both the same, one the subject, the other the object.
This flight, however, merely leads the human being directly to himself. But then the crowd turns up, the crowd we find ourselves in when we really look into ourselves. We find ourselves to be a collection of lusts and passions we had not noticed earlier, because each time we wanted to look into ourselves our eyes were distracted to the world outside. Indeed, compared to what we would have seen inside, the world outside is wonderfully beautiful. Out there, in the illusion, in the maya of life, we stop looking at ourselves inwardly. When people around us, however, begin to talk all kinds of stupidity and we cannot stand it, we escape to where we can be alone. This is quite important at some levels of development. We can and should collect ourselves; it is a good means of self-knowledge. But it can happen that, coming into a crowd of people, we can no longer be alone; those others appear, either within us or outside us, no matter; they do not allow us to be alone. Then comes the experience we must have: solitude actually brings forth the worst kind of fellowship.
Those are genuine experiences. Do not let the strength, the intensity, of the happenings trouble you. You do not have to believe that such strength and intensity as described must necessarily lead to anxiety or fear. It should not prevent anyone from also plunging into these waters. No one will experience all this as swiftly or with such vehemence as Johannes does; it had to come about for him in this way for a definite purpose, even prematurely, too. A normal self-development proceeds differently. Therefore, what occurs in Johannes so tumultuously must be understood as an individual happening. Because he is this particular individual, who has suffered a kind of shipwreck, everything he undergoes takes place much more tempestuously than it otherwise would. He is confronted by the laws of self-development in such a way that they throw him completely off balance. As for us, one thing should be awakened by this description of Johannes, that is, the perception that true self-knowledge has nothing to do with trite phrases, that true self- knowledge inevitably leads us into pain and sorrow. Things that once were a source of delight can assume a different face when they appear in the realm of self- knowledge. We can long for solitude, no doubt, when we have already found self-knowledge. But in certain moments of self-development it is solitude we have lost when we look for it as we did earlier, in moments when we flow out into the objective world, when in loneliness we have to suffer the sharpest pain. Learning to perceive in the right way this outpouring of the Self into other beings will help us feel what has been put into the Mystery Drama: a certain artistic element has been created in which everything is spiritually realistic. One who thinks realistically—a genuine, artistic, sensitive realist—undergoes at unrealistic performances a certain amount of suffering. Even what at a certain level can provide great satisfaction is at another level a source of pain. This is due to the path of self- development. A play by Shakespeare, for instance, an immense achievement in the physical world, can be an occasion for artistic pleasure. But a certain moment of development can arrive when we are no longer satisfied by Shakespeare because we seem inwardly torn to pieces. We go from one scene to the next but no longer see the necessity that has ordered one scene to follow another. We begin to find it unnatural that a scene follows the one preceding it. Why unnatural? Because nothing holds two scenes together except the dramatist Shakespeare and his audience. His scenes follow the abstract principle of cause and effect but not a concrete reality. It is characteristic of Shakespeare's drama that nothing of underlying karma is hinted at; this would tie the scenes together more closely. The Rosicrucian drama grew into a realistic, spiritually realistic one. It makes huge demands on Johannes Thomasius, who is constantly on stage without taking part actively or showing a single important dramatic characteristic. He is the one in whose soul everything takes place, and what is described is the development of that soul, the real experience of the soul's development. Johannes' soul spins one scene realistically out of the one before it. Through this we see that realistic and spiritual do not contradict each other. Materialistic and spiritual things do not need each other, and they can contradict each other. But realistic and spiritual are not opposites; it is quite possible for spiritual realism to be admired even by a materialistic person. In regard to artistic principles, the plays of Shakespeare can be thought of as realistic. You will understand, however, how far the art that goes hand in hand with a science of the spirit must finally lead. For the one who finds his Self out in the cosmos, the whole cosmos becomes an ego being. We cannot bear then anything coming toward us that is not related to the ego being. Art will gradually learn something in this direction; it will come to the ego principle, because the Christ has brought us our ego for the first time. In the most various realms will this ego be alive. In still another way can the specific human entity be shown within the soul and also divided into its various components outside. If someone asked which person represents Atma, which one Buddhi, which one Manas? ... if someone in the audience could exclaim, “O yes, that figure on the stage is the personification of Manas!” ... it would be a horrible kind of art, a dreadful kind of art. It is a bad theosophical habit to try to explain everything like this. One would like to say, “Poor thing!” of a work of art that has to be “explained.” If it were to be attempted with Shakespeare's plays, it would indeed be absurd and downright wrong. These habits are the childhood diseases of the theosophical movement. They will gradually be cured. But for once at least, it is necessary to point them out. It might even happen that someone tries to look for the nine members of the human organization in the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven! On the other hand, it is correct to some extent to say that the united elements of human nature can be assigned to different characters. One person has this soul coloring, a second person another; we can see characters on the stage who present different sides of the whole unified human being. The people we encounter in the world usually present one or another particular trait. As we develop from incarnation to incarnation, we gradually become a whole. To show this underlying fact on the stage, our whole life has somehow to be separated into parts. In this Rosicrucian Mystery, we will find that everything that Maria is supposed to be is dispersed among the other figures who are around her as companions. They form with her what might be called an “egoity.” We find special characteristics of the sentient soul in Philia, of the intellectual soul in Astrid, of the consciousness soul in Luna. It was for this reason that their names were chosen. The names of all the characters and beings were given according to their natures. In Devachan, Scene Seven, particularly, where everything is spirit, not only the words but also the placing of the words is meant to characterize the three figures of Philia, Astrid, and Luna in their exact relationships. The speeches at the beginning of Scene Seven are a better description of sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul than any number of words otherwise could achieve. Here one can really demonstrate what each soul is. One can show in an artistic form the relationship of the three souls by means of the levels at which the figures stand. In the human being they flow into one another. Separated from each other, they show themselves clearly: Philia as she places herself in the cosmos; Astrid as she relates herself to the elements; Luna as she directs herself into free deed and self-knowledge. Because they show themselves so clearly in the Devachan scene, everything in it is alchemy in the purest sense of the word; all of alchemy is there, if one can gradually discover it. Not only as abstract content is alchemy in the scene but in the weaving essence of the words. Therefore, you should listen not merely to what is said, nor indeed only to what each single character speaks, but particularly to how the soul forces speak in relation to one another. The sentient soul pushes itself into the astral body; we can perceive weaving astrality there. The intellectual soul slips itself into the etheric body; there we perceive weaving ether being. We can observe how the consciousness soul pours itself with inner firmness into the physical body. Soul endeavor that has an effect like light is contained in Philia's words. In Astrid is contained what brings about the etheric-objective ability to confront the very truth of things. Inner resolve connected at first with the firmness of the physical body is given in Luna. We must begin to be sensitive to all this. Let us listen to the soul forces in Scene Seven: Philia (Sentient soul)
Astrid (Intellectual soul)
Luna (Consciousness soul)
I would like to draw your attention to the words of Philia,
and to those of Astrid that carry the connotation of something heavier, more compact,
“Dass dir,” “Dass du,” and then we have the “Du” again in Luna's speech woven together with the still heavier, weighty
There the “u” is woven into its neighboring consonants, so that it can take on a still firmer compactness.1 These are the things that one can actually characterize. Please remember, it all depends on the “How.” Let us compare the words Philia speaks next:
with the rather different ones of Astrid:
Just here, where these words are spoken, the inner weaving essence of the world of Devachan has been achieved. I am mentioning all this, because the scenes should make it clear that when self-knowledge begins to unfold into the outer cosmic weaving and being, we have to give up everything that is one-sided. We have to learn, too, to be aware—as we otherwise do only in a quite superficial, pedestrian way—of what is at hand at every point of existence. We become inflexible creatures, we human beings, when we stay rooted to only one spot in space, believing that our words can express the truth. But words, limited as they are to physical sound, are not what best will communicate truth. I would like to put it like this: we have to become sensitive to the voice itself. Anything as important as Johannes Thomasius' path to self-knowledge can be rightfully experienced—it depends on this—only when he struggles courageously for that self-knowledge and holds on to it. When self-knowledge has crushed us, the next stage is to begin to draw into ourselves, to harbor inwardly what was our outer experience, learning how closely the cosmos is related to ourselves (for this comes to us after we understand the nature of the beings around us); now we must attempt courageously to live with our understanding. It is only one half of the matter to dive down like Johannes into a being to whom we have brought sorrow and have thrust into cold earth. For now, we have begun to feel differently. We summon up our courage to make amends for the pain we have caused. Now we can dive into this new life and speak out of our own nature differently. This is what confronts us in Scene Nine. In Scene Two the young girl cried out to Johannes:
In Scene Nine, however, after Johannes has undergone what every path to self-knowledge demands, the same being calls to him:
This is the other side of the coin: first the devastation and despair, and now the return to equilibrium. The being calls to him:
It could not have been described otherwise, this lifting into perception of the world, this replenishing of himself with life experience. True self-knowledge through perception of the cosmos could only have been described with the words Johannes uses when he comes to himself. It has begun, of course, in Scene Two:
Then—after he has dived down into deep earth, after he has united himself with it—the power is born in his soul to let the words arise that express the essence of Scene Nine:
The words, “O man, unfold your being!” are in direct contrast to the words of Scene Two, “O man, know thou thyself!” There appears to us once and again the very same scene. It leads the first time downward to:
Then afterward it is the opposite; it has changed. The scene characterizes soul development.
But Scene Nine shows how the being of the girl attains first hope and then security. That is the turning point. It cannot be constructed haphazardly; it is actual experience. Through it we can sense how self-knowledge in a soul like Johannes Thomasius can ascend into a self- unfolding. We should perceive, too, how his experience is distributed among many single persons in whom one characteristic has been formed in each incarnation. At the end of the drama a whole community stands there in the Sun Temple, like a tableau, and the many together are a single person. The various characteristics of a human being are distributed among them all; essentially there is one person there. A pedant might like to object. “Are there not too many different members of the whole? Surely nine or twelve would be the correct number!” But reality does not always work in such a way as to be in complete agreement with theory. This way it corresponds more nearly with the truth than if we had all the single constituents of man's being marching up in military rank and file. Let us now put ourselves into the Sun Temple. There are various persons standing in the places they belong to karmically, just as their karmas have brought them together in life. But when we think of Johannes here in the middle and think, too, that all the other characters are mirrored in his soul, each character as one of his soul qualities—what is happening there if we can accept it as reality? Johannes Thomasius [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Karma has actually brought these persons together as in a focal point. Nothing is without intention, plan, or reason; what the single individualities have done not only has meaning for each one himself, but each is also a soul experience for Johannes Thomasius. Everything is happening twice: once in the macrocosm, a second time in the microcosm, in the soul of Johannes. This is his initiation. Just as Maria, for example, has a special connection with him, so, too, there is an important part of his soul with a similar connection to another part of his soul. Those are absolute correspondences, embodied in the drama uncompromisingly. What one sees as outer stage- happening is, in Johannes, an inner happening in his development. There has to come about what the Hierophant has described in Scene Three:
It has already formed itself, and this truly entangled knot shows what everything is leading toward. There is absolute reality as to how karma spins its threads; it is not an aimless spinning. We experience the knot as the initiation event in Johannes' soul, and the whole scene shows us a certain individuality actually standing above the others, that is, the Hierophant, who is directing, who is guiding the threads. We need only think of the Hierophant's relationship to Maria. But it is just there that we can realize how self- knowledge can illuminate what happens to Maria in Scene Three. It is not at all pleasant, this emerging out of the Self. It is a thoroughly real experience, a forsaking of the human sheaths by our inner power; the sheaths left behind become then a battleground for inferior powers. When Maria sends down a ray of love to the Hierophant, it can only be portrayed in this way: down below, the physical body, taken over by the power of the adversary, speaks out the antithesis of what is happening above. From above a ray of love streams down, and below arises a curse. Those are the contrasting scenes: Scene Seven inDevachan, where Maria describes what she has actually brought about, and Scene Three, where, from the deserted body, the curses of the demonic forces are directed toward the Hierophant. Those are the two corresponding scenes. They complete each other. If they had had to be “constructed” theoretically from the beginning, the end result would have been incredibly poor. I therefore have based today's lecture on one aspect of this Mystery Drama, and I should like to extend this to include certain special characteristics that underlie initiation. Although it has been necessary to bring out rather sharply what has just been shown as the actual events of initiation, it should not let you lose courage or resolve in your own striving toward the spiritual world. The description of dangers was aimed at strengthening a person against powerful forces. The dangers are there; pain and sorrow are the prospect. It would be a poor sort of effort if we proposed to rise into higher worlds in the most convenient way. Striving to reach the spiritual worlds cannot yet be as convenient as rolling over the miles in a modern train, one of those many conveniences our materialistic culture has put into our everyday lives. What has been described should not make us timid; to a certain extent the very encounter with the dangers of initiation should steel our courage. Johannes Thomasius' disposition made him unable to continue painting; this grew into pain, and the pain grew into perception. So, it is that everything that arouses pain and sorrow will transform itself into perception. But we have to search earnestly for this path, and our search will be possible only when we realize that the truths of spiritual science are not at all simple. They are such profound truths for our whole life that no one will ever understand them perfectly. It is just the single example in actual life that helps us to understand the world. One can speak about the conditions of a spiritual development much more exactly when one describes the development of Johannes, rather than when one describes the development of human beings in general. In the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,2 the development that every human being can undertake is described, simply the concrete possibility as such. When we portray Johannes Thomasius, we look at a single individuality. But therewith we lose the opportunity of describing such development in a general way. I hope you will be induced to say that I have not yet spoken out the essential truth of the matter. For we have described two extremes and must find the various gradations between them. I can give only a few suggestive ideas, which should then begin to live in your hearts and souls. When I gave you some indications about the Gospel of St. Matthew,3 I asked you not to try to remember the very words but to try—when you go out into life—to look into your heart and soul to discover what the words have become. Read not only the printed lectures, but read also in a truly earnest way your own soul. For this to happen, however, something must have been given from outside, something has first to enter into us; otherwise, there could be self-deception of the soul. If you can begin to read in your soul, you will notice that what comes to you from outside re-echoes quite differently within. A true anthroposophical effort would be first of all to understand what is said in as many different ways as there are listeners. No one speaking about spiritual science could wish to be understood in only one sense. He would like to be understood in as many ways as there are souls present to understand him. Anthroposophy can tolerate this. One thing is needed, however, and this is not an incidental remark; one thing is needed: every single kind of understanding should be correct and true. Each one may be individual, but it must be true. Sometimes it seems that the uniqueness of the interpretation lies in being just the opposite of what has been said. When then we speak of self-knowledge, we should realize how much more useful it is to come to it by looking for mistakes within ourselves and for the truth outside. It shall not be said, “Search within yourself for the truth!” Indeed, truth is to be found outside ourselves. We will find it poured out over the world. Through self- knowledge we must become free of ourselves and undergo those various gradations of soul experience. Loneliness can become a horrid companion. We can also perceive our terrible weakness when we sense with our feelings the greatness of the cosmos out of which we have been born. But then through this we take courage. And we can make ourselves courageous enough to experience what we perceive. Then we will finally discover that, after the loss of all the certainty we had in life, there will blossom for us the first and last certainty of life, the confidence that finding ourselves in the cosmos allows us to conquer and find ourselves anew.
Let us feel these words as genuine experience. They will gradually become for us steps in our development.
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| 125. Self-knowledge in Relation to 'The Portal of Initiation'
17 Sep 1910, Basel Translated by George Adams |
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| 125. Self-knowledge in Relation to 'The Portal of Initiation'
17 Sep 1910, Basel Translated by George Adams |
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In Munich, as most of you will be aware, beside repeating last year's representation of Edouard Schuré's drama, The Children of Lucifer, we produced a Rosicrucian Mystery Play which seeks in manifold ways to represent some of the truths that are connected with our Movement. On the one hand, the Mystery Play was intended as an example, showing how that which inspires all theosophical life can also pour itself out into Art. On the other hand, we must not forget that this Play contains very much of our spiritual-scientific teachings, in a form in which we shall perhaps only discover it during years to come. This, above all, must not be misunderstood. You should take pains to read the things that are contained in it,—I do not say between the lines, for they are in the actual words, but they are there in a spiritual way. If you were really to take the Rosicrucian Mystery Play in earnest, and look for the things that it contains during the next few years, it would not be necessary for me to give any lectures at all for many years to come. You would discover many things which I am giving in lectures on all kinds of subjects. It will, however, be more practicable for us to seek these things together than alone. In a certain sense, it is very good for that which lives in Spiritual Science to be among us in this form. To-day, therefore, taking our start from the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, I should like to speak of certain properties of human self-knowledge. But we must first call to mind how the individuality, living and working in the body of Johannes Thomasius, is characterised in this Play. Hence, I should like this lecture on self-knowledge to begin with a recitation of those passages which refer to the self-knowledge of Johannes.
In these two scenes, ‘Know thou thyself, O man’ and ‘O man, feel thou thyself,’ two stages of development in the unfolding of the soul are brought before us. I beg you not to think it strange if I now say the following: I am in no way opposed to the Rosicrucian Mystery Play being interpreted as I have sometimes heard other poems interpreted in theosophical circles. For in this Rosicrucian Mystery there may well come before our souls in a more living and immediate form what I have often said in relation to other works of art I have interpreted. I never hesitated to say: Though the plant or flower does not know what the human being who beholds it finds therein, nevertheless, the flower contains what he finds. I said this once when I was about to interpret Faust. It is not necessary for the poet, when he actually wrote the poem, to have exactly known or felt in the words all that was afterwards found there. I can assure you, nothing of what I may now or subsequently attach to this Mystery Play, and of which I know that it is really contained therein, came to me consciously when the several scenes were created. The scenes grew out of themselves, like the leaves of the plant. One cannot produce such a form by first having the idea, and then translating it into the outer form. I always found it very interesting to see it coming into being, scene by scene. Other friends, too, who learnt to know the scenes one by one, always said. How strange it is; it always comes out differently from what one had imagined. The Mystery Play is like a picture of the evolution of mankind in the evolution of a single man. And I will emphasise, for real and true feeling one cannot shroud oneself in abstractions when one wishes to set forth Theosophy. Each human soul is different from another, and must indeed be different; for everyone experiences his own evolution, in all that is given as our general teaching, we can only receive guiding lines. Hence the full truth can only be given if we take our start from an individual soul,—representing a single human individuality in a fully individual and characteristic way. If, therefore, any one studies the character of Johannes Thomasius, seeking to translate into theories of human evolution what is specifically said of him, he would be making an entire mistake. He would be much in error if he imagined: ‘I myself shall experience just what Johannes Thomasius experienced.’ That which Johannes Thomasius has to experience applies indeed to every man as to its general tendency and direction. Nevertheless, to undergo these individual experiences one would have to be Johannes Thomasius! Everyone is a Johannes Thomasius his own way. Thus, everything is set forth in a fully individual way, and by this very fact it presents in as true a way as possible, through individual figure, the characteristic evolution of the human being in his soul. Therefore, a broad basis had to be created. Thomasius is first shown on the physical plane. Single experiences of his soul are indicated, such, for example, as this one, which cannot but be of great significance:—We are told how at a time not very long ago, he deserted a being who was devoted to him in faithful love. That is a thing that often happens, but it works differently on one who is striving to undergo an inner evolution. It is a deep and profound truth: He who is to undergo a higher evolution does not attain self-knowledge by brooding into himself, but by diving other beings. By self-knowledge we must know that we are come from the Cosmos. And we can only dive down by transmuting our own self into another self. To begin with we transmuted into the beings once near to us in life. This therefore, is an example of the conscious experience of one's own self within another. Johannes, having got deeper down into himself, with his self dives down in self-knowledge into another being—into that being whom he had brought bitter pain. So, then we see how Thomasius dives down in self-knowledge. Theoretically we may say: ‘If you would know the flower, you must dive into the flower.’ Self-knowledge, however, is most readily attained when we dive down into the events in the midst of which we ourselves have stood in some other way. So long as we are in our own self, we go through the outer experiences. Over against a true self-knowledge, that which we think of the life of other beings is a mere abstraction. For Thomasius, to begin with, the experiences of other human beings become his own experience. Here, for example, was one Capesius, describing his experiences. We can well understand how such experiences arise in life; Thomasius, however, receives them differently. He listens, but his listening (it is described so in one of the later scenes) is different. It is as though he were not there at all with his ordinary self. Another, deeper faculty reveals itself. It is as though he himself entered into the soul of Capesius and experienced what is going on within that soul. It is exceedingly significant when he becomes estranged from himself. For this indeed is inseparable from self-knowledge: one must tear oneself free of oneself and go out into another. It is indeed significant for Thomasius when, having heard all these speeches, he finds himself obliged to say:—
Why did it make of him a nothingness? Because he dived down through self-knowledge into the other beings. Brooding into his own inner life, makes a man proud and arrogant. True self-knowledge leads at first to the pain of diving down into other selves. Johannes listens to the words of Capesius. He experiences in the other soul the words of Felicia. He follows Strader into his cloistered loneliness. All this, to begin with, is abstraction; he has not yet come to the point to which he is afterwards guided through his pain. Self-knowledge is deepened by meditation in the inner self. That which was shown in the first scene, is now revealed by deepened self-knowledge, which—rising out of the abstraction—enters into reality. The words which you have heard resounding through the centuries—words of the Delphic oracle—gain a new life for the human being at this point; yet to begin with it is a life of estrangement from his own self. Johannes, as one who is in process of self-knowledge, dives down into all other beings. He lives in air and water, rocks and streams,—not in himself. All these words which we can only shew resounding from outside, are really words of meditation. At the very moment when the curtain rises, we must conceive the words that sound forth in all self-knowledge—we must conceive them far, far louder than they can be presented on the stage. Then the self-knower dives down into a multitude of other beings. He learns to know the things into which he enters thus. And now the same experience, which he already had before, comes before him in a most terrible way. It is a deep truth. Self-knowledge, when it takes its course in this way, leads us to look at ourselves quite differently than we ever did before. It leads us to learn to feel our own Ego as a stranger! In fact, it is the outer vehicle of man which he feels most near to himself. A human being of our time is apt to feel it far more nearly when he cuts his finger than when he is hurt by a false judgment passed by his fellowman. How much more does it hurt the human being of to-day when he cuts his finger than when he hears a false judgment! Yet he is only cutting into his bodily vehicle. This is the thing that emerges in self-knowledge: we learn to feel our body as an instrument. It is not so difficult for a man to feel his hand as an instrument when he uses it to grasp an object; but he now learns to feel the same with one or another portion of the brain. This feeling of the brain as of an instrument occurs at a certain stage of self-knowledge. Things become localised. When we drive a nail in the wall, we know that we are doing it with a certain tool. Now we are also aware that in doing so we make use of this or that part of the brain. These things become objective—external to us. We learn to know our brain as something that is really separated from us. Self-knowledge brings about this objectivity of our own bodily vehicle, until at length it is as foreign to us as our external tools. And as we begin thus to feel our bodily nature as an objective thing, thereby we also begin to live in the outer Universe. Only because a man still feels his body as his own, he is not clear about it; he thinks there is a boundary between the air outside him and the air within. He says to himself that he is there within; and yet, within him is the same air as outside him. Take then the substance of the air; it is within and at the same time without. And so it is in every case so it is with the blood, and with all that is bodily. In a bodily sense, man cannot be either within or without. That is mere Maya. Inasmuch as the bodily ‘inside’ becomes external to us, it is prolonged into the world outside us, into the Cosmos. And so it is, in deed and truth. The pain of feeling oneself a stranger to oneself,—this was intended in the first scene. It is the pain of feeling oneself estranged from oneself, by finding oneself in all outer things. Johannes' own bodily vehicle is like an entity that is outside him. Feeling his own body outside of himself, he sees the other body approaching him,—the body of the being whom he has deserted. This other one approaches him, and he has learned to speak with that other being's own words. This tells him that his self has now expanded to the other being:
The reproach comes vividly into our soul, only when we are bound to utter the suffering of the other one, with which our own self is connected; for our own self has now dived down into the other self. Such is the real deepening of things. Johannes at this point is really in the pain which he has caused; he feels himself poured out into it and again awakened. What does he really experience? Taking it all in all, we find that the ordinary man undergoes such an experience only in the state that we call Kama-loca. The candidate for Initiation has to experience, already in this world, what the normal human being undergoes in the spiritual world. He must undergo within the physical body the Kama-loca experiences which in the ordinary course are undergone outside the physical. Therefore, all the characteristics which we may understand as properties of Kama-loca are presented here as experiences of Initiation. Just as Johannes dives down into the soul whom he has given pain, so must the normal man in Kama-loca dive down into the souls to whom he gave pain and suffering. As though a box-on-the-ears were given back to him, so must he feel the pain. There is only this difference: while the Initiate experiences these things within the physical body, the other human being undergoes them after death. He who experiences them now will live in quite a different way when Kama-loca comes. However, even that which man can undergo in Kama-loca, may be experienced in such a way that he is not yet free. It is a difficult task to become completely free. It is one of the most important experiences of spiritual development in our time (in the Graeco-Latin age it was not yet so) to realise how infinitely difficult it is to get free of oneself. A most important Initiation-experience is expressed in the words wherein Johannes feels himself fettered to his own lower body. His own being appears to him as a being to whom he is enchained:—
That is a thing essentially connected with self-knowledge. It is a secret of self-knowledge.; we must only apprehend it in the right way. Have we really become better men by becoming earthly men,—by diving down into our earthly vehicles? Or should we be better if we were able to be alone in our inner life,—if we could simply cast the vehicles aside? Superficial people may well ask, when they first meet with the theosophical life, Why should one first dive down into an earthly body? The simplest thing would be to remain above; then we should not have all the misery of diving down. Why have the wise Powers of Destiny plunged us into the body? In simple feeling, one can explain a little if one says that Divine-spiritual forces have been working at this earthly body for millions of years. Precisely inasmuch as it is so, we should make more of ourselves than we have the force to do. Our inner forces are inadequate! The fact is, if we merely wish to be what we are in our own inner being,—if we are not corrected by our vehicles—we cannot possibly be equal yet to what the Gods have made. Life shows itself in this way. Here upon Earth, man is transplanted into his bodily sheaths - sheaths that that have been prepared by beings during tree Worlds. Man still has the task of building and developing his inner being. Here between birth and death, man is an evil being through the elasticity of his bodily sheaths. In Devachan he is once more a better being, for he is there received by the Divine-spiritual beings who pour him through with their own forces. In time to come—the Vulcan era—he will be a perfect being. Here upon Earth, he is a being who gives way to one lust or another. The heart, for example, is so wisely ordered that it withstands for decades the attacks which man directs against it with his excesses—as, for instance, with his drinking coffee. Such as he can be to-day by virtue of his own forces, man goes his way through Kama-loca. In Kama-loca he shall learn to know what he can by his own force alone. And that, in truth, is nothing good. Man, to describe himself, cannot describe himself with any predicate of beauty. He must describe himself as Johannes does:
Our inner being is harnessed, as it were elastically, and is thus hidden from us. Truly we learn to know ourselves as ‘some fierce dragon’ when we learn to know Initiation. Therefore these words are derived from the very deepest feeling; they are not words of morbid introspection, but of true self-knowledge:
Fundamentally the two are the same; first as the object, then as the subject. ‘I willed to flee from thee …’ This flight, however, leads him all the more into himself. And now the ‘company’ emerges—in which we really are when we look into ourselves. This ‘company’ consists of our own cravings and passions,—all that we did not notice before, because every time we wanted to look into ourselves our gaze was diverted to the world around us. Compared to the inner life into which we tried to look, the world is a world of wondrous beauty. Here, then, we cease to look into ourselves in the illusion or Maya of life. When human beings around us indulge in vain chatter and we grow tired of it, we take flight in solitude. For certain stages of development, it is important to do so. We can collect ourselves. We should collect ourselves in this way; it is a means of self-knowledge. Nevertheless, there are these experiences we come into a ‘company’ where we can no more be lonely. For at this stage—it matters not, whether within us or without us—beings appear who will not let us be alone. Then comes the experience which man is meant to have. Solitude itself brings him into the worst society of all:—
All these are real experiences, but you must not let their very intensity become a snare. Do not imagine, if such experiences are presented in their full intensity, that you should therefore be afraid. Do not imagine that these things are meant to divert any one from diving down himself into these waters. One may not experience them at once with the same intensity as Johannes did. He had to experience them thus for a definite purpose,—in a certain sense, even prematurely. Regular self-development will go at quite another pace. The fact that it takes place in-Johannes so tumultuously, should be conceived as an individual matter. Because he is an individuality who has suffered shipwreck inasmuch as he infringes on these laws, therefore it all takes place in him in a far more tempestuous way. He learns to know these laws, in that they throw him deeply out of his balance. Nevertheless, what is here described of Johannes is intended to call forth the feeling that true self-knowledge has nothing to do with trite or easy phrases. Self-knowledge, if it be true, can do no other to begin with than to lead through suffering and grief. Things that were hitherto a refreshment take on another countenance when they appear in the field of self-knowledge. No doubt, we can pray for solitude, even though we have already found self-knowledge. Nevertheless in certain moments of self-knowledge, solitude may be the very thing we lose, if we seek it in our hitherto accustomed way. It is in moments when we flow out into the objective world, and when the lonely one suffers the direst pain of all. This pouring-out of ourselves into other beings,—we must learn to feel it rightly if we would feel what this Play contains. It is conceived with a certain aesthetic feeling; it is ‘spiritually realistic,’ through and through. A realist with true aesthetic feeling suffers a certain pain at an unrealistic presentation. Here again, that can give satisfaction at a certain stage can be a source of pain at another. All this depends upon the way of self-knowledge. When for example you have understood a play of Shakespeare's—a great work, in the external world—it may no doubt be a source of aesthetic pleasure to you. Nevertheless, there may occur a moment of development when you are no longer satisfied. You feel your inner being rent as you go on from scene to scene. You no longer see any necessity in the sequence of one scene after another. You feel it quite unnatural that one scene is placed next to the other. Why so? Because there is nothing to hold the scenes together,—only the writer Shakespeare, and the onlooker. There is an abstract principle of causality and no reality of being in the sequence of the scenes. It is a characteristic of Shakespeare's dramas; nothing is indicated that works karmically through and through and holds the whole together. The Rosicrucian Mystery Play, on the other hand, is realistic—spiritually realistic. Much is required of Johannes Thomasius. Without actively partaking in any important role, he is there the stage. He is the one in whose soul it is all taking place. What is described is the development of the soul—the real experiences that are undergone in the soul's development. The soul of Johannes, realistically, spins one scene out of another. Here, then, we see that the realistic and the spiritual are in no contradiction to each other. The ‘materialistic’ and the spiritual need not—although they can—be in contradiction to each other. The realistic and the spiritual certainly need not be in contradiction to each other. Moreover, a materialist can thoroughly admire what is realistic in a spiritual sense. Shakespeare's dramas can certainly be described as realistic in terms of an aesthetic principle. But you will also understand that an Art which goes hand in hand with Theosophy eventually leads to this:—For him who experiences his own self in the Cosmos, the whole Cosmos becomes an Ego-being. Therefore we cannot abide it that anything should meet him in the Cosmos which does not stand in relation to the Ego-being. Art will in this respect have to learn that which will bring it to the principle of the Ego. For in effect, Christ once upon a time brought us the I. In the most varied spheres this I will live and find expression. This human reality of the soul, and on the other hand this dismemberment in the world outside, shows itself also in another way. If at that time someone asked: Which person is Atma, which is Buddhi, and which Manas? … truly it was a dreadful Art if it had to be thus interpreted, as saying: ‘This character or that is a personification of Manas.’ There are such theosophical abuses, trying to interpret things in this direction. One could only say of a work of Art that had to be interpreted in such a way, Poor work of Art! Certainly, for Shakespeare's plays it would be utterly false and laughable. These are but illnesses of childhood in the theosophical movement, and we shall wean ourselves of them in time. But it is necessary to draw attention to them. Someone might even set to work and look for the nine members of human nature in the Ninth Symphony! Yet it is right in a certain sense that the single and united human nature is also distributed among many human beings. One human being has this colouring of soul, and another that. Thus, we can see the human beings before us, representing many sides of the total human nature. Only it must be conceived in a realistic way, it must arise out of the very nature of things. Even as human beings meet us in the ordinary world, there too they represent the several sides of human nature. As we unfold ourselves from incarnation to incarnation, we shall become a totality in time. To present the underlying truth of these things, the whole of life must be dissolved. So, it is in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play. What is intended, in a certain sense, to represent Maria, is dissolved among the other figures who are about her as her companions and who with her together constitute an Ego-hood. Qualities notably of the Sentient Soul are to be seen in Philia; qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-soul in Astrid; qualities of the Spiritual Soul in Luna. And in this sense their names are chosen. The names are chosen for the several beings according to their nature. Not only in the names; in the whole way in which the words are placed, the characterisation of the three—Philia, Astrid and Luna—is exactly graded. This is especially true of the seventh scene, where the Spiritual—Devachan—is to be shown. The beginning of the seventh scene is a far better characterisation of ‘Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Spiritual Soul’ than can otherwise be given in mere words. Human figures are shown, in answer to the question: What is ‘Sentient Soul,’ what is ‘Intellectual Soul’ and what is ‘Spiritual Soul’? In Art, the different stages can be shown, through the whole way in which these figures stand there. In the human being they flow into one another. Once they are dissolved from one another, they present themselves in this way: Philia places herself into the Universal All, Astrid into the elements, while Luna goes outward in self-action and self-knowledge. And inasmuch as they present themselves in this way, the Devachanic scene contains all that can represent Alchemy in the true sense of the word. The whole of Alchemy is there contained; only we must gradually find it out. It is given not n the mere abstract content, but in the life and being of the words. Therefore, you should not only hear what is said,—and above all, not only what each individual speaks;—you should hear how they speak, in relation to one another. The Sentient Soul inserts herself into the astral body here, then, we have to do with weaving astrality. The Intellectual Soul inserts herself into the ether-body; here, then, we have to do with living, moving ether-essence. Lastly, we see how the Spiritual Soul adorns herself and with inner firmness pours herself into the physical body. That which works through the Soul, as light within the soul, is given in the words of Philia. That which works in an etheric way, so that we stand over against what is true, is given in Astrid. That which gives inner firmness, so that it is united with the physical body which is primarily solid, is given in Luna We must be sensitive to this.
I draw your attention to the fact that Philia, in the last line but one, uses the words ‘Dass dir, geliebte Schwester.’ In Astrid's words we have the darker sound ‘Dass du, geliebte Schwester,’ entering into the denser element. ‘Dass du, ... dass dir ...’ And now in Luna's words it is interwoven with the still more weighty sound, ‘in suchenden Menschenseele.’ Here the u is so interwoven with the neighbouring consonants as to gain a still closer density. These are the things we can characterise. They are indeed like this. It depends above all on the manner, not on the mere content. Compare the further words of Philia:—
with the quite different way in which Astrid speaks:—
In all these words there is conveyed the inner life and being of the Devachanic element of the world. Through these things we must realise (and for this reason I mention them) that when self-knowledge begins to go out into the outer life and being of the Universe, we need to wean ourselves of all one-sidedness. We can but experience in a dead and Philistine way that which is present at each single point of existence. It makes us rigid to be held fast at a single point in space and to imagine that we can express the truth in words. Mere words cannot express the truth so well, for it is all involved in the actual physical sound. We must feel the quality of expression also. Such an important process as the self-knowledge of Johannes is only rightly experienced when he courageously achieves it, when he grasps it bravely. This is the next act. Self-knowledge has shattered us and cast us down. Now, having learned in the Universe outside—having perceived the Cosmos as related to us; having known the very being of other beings,—now we begin to take it into ourselves. Now we make bold to live what we have known. It is only half the battle to dive down, as Johannes did, into a being to whom we brought suffering—whom we ‘thrust deep beneath the chill, cold ground.’ We now feel differently; we take courage to balance-out the pain. Then we dive down into this life, and in our own being we speak differently. This, to begin with, is what meets us in the next scene. While in the second scene the other being called to Johannes:
—now, in the ninth scene, now that Johannes has experienced himself at the place whither all self-knowledge drives us, now; the same being calls to him:
This is the other side. First the shattering experience, and then the needed compensation. Therefore, the other being calls to him: ‘Thou wilt find me again.’ This lifting of experience into the Universe—this filling of the self with living experience of the Universal All—could be presented in no other way. True self-knowledge—emerging as it does out of the Cosmos—could only be presented in that Johannes awakened with the very same words. Quite naturally it must begin thus in the second scene:—
But then, when he has dived down into the ground of earth,—united himself with the earth beneath,—then there arises in his soul the force to let the words arise in a new form. That is essential (in the ninth scene):
Then come the words: ‘Know thou thyself, O man!’ by contrast to the words in the second scene: ‘O man, feel thou thyself!’ Again, and again, the same picture meets us. While on the one hand the scene goes downward:
afterwards it is reversed; it changes. The scene portrays the real process. So, too, we heard the terrible, shattering word in the second scene:—
And in the ninth scene it is shown how his being only now gains confidence and certainty. Such is the congruence of the two scenes. These are not purposeful constructions. The real experiences are so and must be so—quite as a matter of course. Thus, we should feel how in a soul such as Johannes Thomasius, self-knowledge is gradually purified, till it becomes living self-experience. And we should feel how this experience of Johannes is distributed over many human beings. His own self-knowledge is distributed over all the human beings in whom—in their single incarnations—the several portions of his being are expressed. In the Sun-Temple at the last, a whole company of human beings are there. They all are there like a tableau, and yet all together are a single man. The properties of a single human being are distributed among them all. It is at bottom a single human being. A pedant would say: ‘Then there are too many parts, there should be nine instead of twelve.’ Reality, however, does not create so as to agree with theories; yet it is more in agreement with the truth than if in regular and theoretic fashion the several members of the human being were to be marched on to the stage. Imagine yourself now in the Sun-Temple. There are the single human beings, placed in the actual way in which they belong together karmically. There they are standing together, even as Karma has put them -together in life. And now imagine: Johannes himself is there, and the character of every single one is reflected in his soul. Each single one is a soul-quality of Johannes. What, then, has happened—if we sum up the result? Karma has brought them together, as at a nodal point of Karma. Nothing is meaningless, aimless or purposeless. All that the single human beings have done, signifies not only single events, but in each case an experience of Johannes' soul. Everything takes place twice over: in the Macrocosm and in the Microcosm—the soul of Johannes. And that is his Initiation. For instance, as Maria is to Johannes himself, so is an, important member of his soul to another member of the soul. These are the real congruences, strictly carried out. That which is action outwardly,—inwardly in Johannes is a process of evolution. That which the Hierophant says in the third scene is about to happen here:—
The knot has been formed. The well-tied knot reveals whither all is leading. On the one hand is the absolute reality—the way in which Karma spins, world-fashioning. It is no aimless spinning. It is the knot as the Initiation-process in Johannes' soul. And yet, such is the whole, that a single hum-an individuality is there over and above them all. It is the Hierophant, who plays his active part and guides the several threads. You need only think of the Hierophant in his relation to Maria. This passage in the third scene can indeed illumine what self-knowledge is. It is no joke to go out of oneself; it is a very real process. The human vehicles are deserted by the inner force; then they remain behind and become a battlefield for subordinate powers. The very moment when Maria is sending down to the Hierophant the ray of love, can be presented in no other way than thus: Down there is the body, taken hold of by the power of the Adversary, and saying the very opposite of what is going on above. Above, the ray of love rays down; below, a curse is uttered. These then are the contrasting scenes: Devachan in the seventh scene, Maria describing what she actually did; and in the third scene the world below, where, as the body is left behind, the curse of the demonic Powers against the Hierophant is uttered. Here you have two complementary pictures. It would be very bad if one had to construct them so, artificially. To-day, then, I have based my lecture on one aspect of the Mystery Play. I hope we have thus been able to illumine certain characteristic facts that underlie Initiation. The fact that certain things have had to be sharply emphasised—so as to describe the processes of Initiation—should not render you pusillanimous in striving for the spiritual world. Descriptions of dangers have no other purpose than to steel the human being against adversary powers. The dangers are there, the pains and sufferings are certainly before us. It would be a very poor aspiration if we were only willing to ascend into the higher worlds, so to speak, by the most comfortable ways. The spiritual worlds cannot be attained as comfortably as in modern railway trains, where you simply let yourself be rolled along, or as the outer material culture generally does it in the things of outer life. That which is here described is not intended to make us lacking in courage; quite on the contrary. Our courage shall be steeled precisely by making ourselves acquainted in this way with the attendant dangers of Initiation. Just as it is in Johannes Thomasius, whose tendency made him incapable of guiding the brush any longer, and this was translated into dire pain, and pain at length into knowledge; so too, all that which kindles pain and grief will be translated into knowledge. But we must seek the path in real earnest. We can only do so by realising that the theosophical truths are not so simple after all. They are deep truths of life,—so much so that we can never come to an end in seeking to comprehend them. Examples of life itself enable us most nearly to comprehend the world. We can speak far more exactly of the conditions of higher development when we describe the development of Johannes, than we can do when we describe the human being's development in general. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, the higher evolution is described such as it can be for every human being. The pure possibility, which can indeed be realised, is there described. When we describe Johannes on the other hand, we describe a, single human being, and in so doing it is not possible to us to portray higher development in the abstract. I hope you will not find occasion to say that after all I have not yet told you the truth. The fact is, there are two extremes, and we must find the grades between them. All I can do is again and again to give you hints and suggestions. These must then live in your hearts and souls. After the hints, I recently gave you on St. Matthew's Gospel I said, ‘Try not to remember the literal words, but when you go out into the world try to create in heart and soul that which the words will there have become. Try not to read only in Lecture Cycles, but also with earnestness to read in your own soul.’ To do so, however, something must first have been given to you from outside; something must first have passed into your soul; otherwise, you would only be deceiving yourself. Try then to read it in your soul, and you will see that that which has sounded into your soul from outside will yet resound there in quite another form. This and this alone would be the true anthroposophical striving:—In every lecture that is given, there should be as many different ways of understanding as there are listeners present. He who would speak about Theosophy can never wish to be understood in one way only; he would fain be understood in as many ways as individual souls are there. Spiritual Science can afford this. One thing, however, is necessary—I do not say it as a mere aside. One thing is necessary, namely that every single way of understanding be true. It may be individual, but it must be true. Some people go so far in their individual ways of understanding that they understand the exact opposite of what is said! Thus, if we speak of self-knowledge, we must also realise: It is more useful in self-knowledge to look for the mistakes within us and the True outside ourselves. We do not say: ‘Seek for the truth within thyself.’ No! You will find what is true in the world outside, it is poured out into the Universe. We must become free of ourselves through self-knowledge, and we must go through all these stages of the soul. Loneliness can be a very bad companion; but we can also feel the full measure of our own weakness, when in our soul we sense the echoing greatness of that Universe from out of which we are born. And at this moment we take courage. If we make bold to experience in life what we cognise, then we shall find it confirmed:—Out of the loss of the last refuge of our life there will spring forth life's first and last refuge—life's first and last security. It is that certainty which makes it possible for us first to overcome ourselves, and then to find ourselves anew—in that we find ourselves within the Cosmos.
If we feel these things as living experience, they will become steps in our evolution. |
| 127. The Mission of the New Spirit Revelation: Wisdom, Piety and a Secure Hold on Life
23 Feb 1911, Basel |
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| 127. The Mission of the New Spirit Revelation: Wisdom, Piety and a Secure Hold on Life
23 Feb 1911, Basel |
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Spiritual science, when properly recognized, gives life assurance and strength. How can it be beneficial in life? Many people believe that learning and gaining spiritual knowledge is more of a hindrance than a help to a truly good human life. Why do you actually need so much spiritual knowledge, why do you need to learn so much about the development of the earth and an entire planetary system? If you simply try to search for your higher self within yourself and thereby become a good person, then you are basically also the best theosophist. — Other, more theoretically inspired minds enjoy hearing what a person consists of, to exercise their intellect by seeing how humanity has developed through the various cultural periods, to know regular number periods, and they want to learn such things as soon as possible, preferably to be able to write down the most important teachings in a nutshell and spread them in a kind of catechism. These two views do not correspond at all to what spiritual science can be for a person and what it becomes for someone who is able to place himself in life in the right way through spiritual science. First of all, it is certainly true that we consist of physical, etheric, astral bodies and I. But if one believes that this is all there is to it, that one can list these, then one is mistaken. One knows nothing but a schema. One only knows something about the human being when one can apply such knowledge to life. But one cannot do that if one is not clear about the fact that it is not just a matter of knowing the names of these four members, but of knowing how these four members are connected in the human being. Whether the etheric body is more or less connected to the physical body in a person, whether the etheric body and the astral body strive towards each other and seek close contact with each other, or whether they are more loosely connected, that is what matters. If we focus our attention on this, it becomes clear that in the course of human development on earth, this relationship between the limbs changes. It was different in the past and will be different in the future than it is today. If we look at the ancient Egyptians in the very early millennia of Egyptian culture, that is, at ourselves in earlier incarnations, we find in this ancient Egyptian a person in whom the connection between the physical, etheric and astral bodies is looser. If we look at present-day man, we find a much more intimate, denser connection. And in the future, this connection will become ever denser and denser. It is only in this context that the passage through the different cultural periods makes sense for us. When we speak of the fact that a person embodies himself so and so often, one can also ask: Why does he embody himself again? We do indeed encounter a different kind of outer human being each time, because the connection of the sheaths is always different. As Chaldeans, we actually had a very different bodily structure than we do today, and in the future we will have still others. Thus we have different experiences because we have different human sheaths. Now it is a matter of forming correct ideas about how this inner human core, which goes from embodiment to embodiment, actually relates to the one in which we clothe ourselves, to the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. External science basically only examines the outer shell. It knows nothing of the deeper laws that prevail from incarnation to incarnation. But external science also misunderstands the laws of the outer shell in terms of their actual deeper meaning. We can see this for ourselves when we look at the connections that external science believes in and those it does not believe in. It is quite interesting to note that for a long time science tended to ascribe free will to man. But I have already pointed out that more recent science often denies this free will. It relies on external research. This tells us: Look at the course of external life. For example, statistics can be used to determine how many suicides occur in a particular area. A certain regularity of suicides can be observed. The statistical data show that something like this happens with a certain regularity. There are simply so and so many people doomed to commit suicide. How could one still speak of free will there? One could go much further and could point to actuarial practice. This practice consists of calculating and formulizing how many of so and so many people are still alive after thirty years. So it is numerically determined how many people born today will still be alive after thirty years. Death and life are bound in strict external natural laws. This has been recognized by external science. But it will be forced to recognize other things as well. It is already being asserted that facts are coming to light that will force people to think spiritually. In general, science is not inclined to accept something new very quickly. It has a peculiar habit in this regard. One can hear great declamations about the fact that in the “Dark Ages” there were people who opposed the discoveries of Copernicus. His teaching had to be established with great effort against the obscurantists of that time. And those who talk most about it do not just behave in this way with regard to spiritual science, but also with regard to such facts of science that force us to seek spiritual laws. For example, a doctor in Berlin established certain numerical relationships in the course of life. This doctor, Wilhelm Fliess, began to make notes about how births were related to deaths in individual families. For example, on a certain day a female personality died in a family. 1428 days before, the first grandchild of this person was born, 1428 days after the death of the second grandchild, so that we have the death of the grandmother and symmetrically forward and backward a grandchild is born. But that's not all. In a period of 7 times 1428 days after the death of this person, a great-grandson is born. So that if you follow this, you always come across very specific numerical relationships; numerical relationships that ultimately determine the connection between deaths and births in a most wonderful way. Fließ has found this out in numerous cases. But apparently science still does not want to recognize it today, it is still too much against its direction. Even the improvement of health conditions is subject to numerical relationships. The number of deaths from tuberculosis in a given period, compared with the number of deaths decades before, is found to be regulated by certain numbers. The doctors say they have limited the number of cases through hygienic measures. But Fliess proved that this could be calculated according to arithmetic relationships. This is very inconvenient for today's science, but it will be forced to recognize the rule of objective arithmetic. It will again come back to the old Pythagorean theorem: Number is something that rules everything, that moves and lives. While we do our calculating in our souls, the higher spirits have long since done the calculating in order to place themselves in the course of life, which corresponds to the numbers. The Pythagorean theorem: God practises mathematics by allowing life to run its course – seems to be coming into its own again. But on the other hand, this would in turn strengthen that attitude of external science, which leaves the inner life of man out of account of his life's fortunes. If it is arithmetically certain when we must die, if birth and death are so related that they are 7 times 1428 days apart, then our inner life seems to be harnessed into external violent circumstances. We apparently have to refrain from speaking of special laws that govern our inner selves. But one can certainly cite external reasons that show us that history is not quite right after all. If it is calculated that so and so many suicides are committed or so and so many thefts are perpetrated in a particular place, does that prove that a person must commit a theft? According to the formulas of probability one can calculate the probable length of a person's life. But I do not believe that any person would admit that he must die on the day calculated by arithmetic. Nothing follows for the inner being from these laws of mathematical formulas. What about it, when Fließ proves that 1428 days elapse between two births and death? Does this prove anything for the inner lawfulness of our ego? It is not so easy to see how the relationship between this inner core of our being and the outer course of life is. How does this fit with the idea that we follow our karma, that we have to follow our inner ego? This is not easy to understand. It can be made clear with the help of an image. It is quite possible that two events, two currents, two facts, which are very much related to each other, proceed independently of each other. Consider the following: if you want to get from here to Zurich, you take the train. But you can see when the train leaves from the timetable, which also contains a lot of numbers. So you are, in a sense, closely connected with the numbers. You feel dependent on the numbers in the timetable in what you think, strive for, and inwardly experience. But isn't it possible, alongside this series of facts, that you can study the timetable, the other one related to the development of your soul, that you want to get on the train? Studying the timetable will never tell you whether you are good or evil, wise or foolish. Just as it is unimportant for the inner workings of our soul which timetable exists, it is equally unimportant for the karma of our lives which numbers result from the calculations made by Fliess. We step into the stream of life, which is governed by laws that have nothing to do with our inner laws other than what we ourselves bring about. We must decide to get on the train. It is equally true that through the inner laws of karma we must determine to step into a stream of life, which is then governed by the laws of arithmetic. Why are all these things being said? Because the spiritual seeker should increasingly develop a feeling that life is complicated, that life is something that cannot be grasped with the most convenient thoughts. Those who think that life can be easily understood by knowing a few sentences from spiritual science are very much mistaken. One must have the will to penetrate deeper and deeper into these connections. One must develop a feeling for the fact that the thoughts according to which the world is structured also apply to the human being. If there were no connection between the external laws and human karma, then the whole of life would fall apart. This will be demonstrated by two facts. In spiritual science, efforts are made to provide the best possible parables. In a sense, however, the numbers on the timetable are connected with practical life. Even if it has nothing to do with the timetable whether we travel to Zurich at all or not, even if we see no connection at all, the timetable is still connected with human circumstances. People have put it together in such a way that it corresponds to life circumstances in a not altogether unskillful manner. So originally the timetable was nevertheless adapted to human living conditions in general. Something similar is the case for our karma and the stream of our life, which is regulated by it. The beings of the higher hierarchies have also determined the “timetable” according to the numerical relationships that statistics finds when it advances with regular numbers, so that these correspond externally to general human conditions. When he is re-embodied, one person finds life comfortable, while for another it is uncomfortable. This law does not apply to all families in such a way that a grandchild is always born 1428 days before the grandmother's death. But if we consider that 1428 can also be divided by 28 - it is 51 times 28 - we understand the numerical ratio a little better. We will not always get the number 1428 in these calculations, but as a rule, there is a multiple of 28 between the death of any family member and a birth. The multiplying factor may be 13 or 17 or something else, but the number 28 is in it, it is regularly arranged. So we have the opportunity to get on different trains according to the timetable. And so, according to our karma, we have the opportunity to arrange our lives, comfortably or uncomfortably. I am not just saying this to suggest how complicated these external conditions are, but I would also like to point out that we humans can draw a moral consequence from all such insights. And that is what spiritual science gives us as something so infinitely important. We can say: I stand in this world, I find in this world numerical relationships that show how our outer life is regulated. It has taken long periods of human cultural development to discover this. But how much do we actually know about this regularity? — And here we have to say: infinitely little. Slowly and gradually we have explored some of the divine wisdom. But just when we absorb the most beautiful and important things of wisdom, it urges us to humility. It shows how little we can grasp life with the thoughts we have. This contemplation is then an incentive to strive further for the light. This moral sense, this awe for the wisdom of the world, is what we can acquire and what makes us better people. And this sense of wisdom we acquire, it comes over us when we realize that this wisdom has been close to us in our intermediate life between death and new birth. When we need to descend to a new earthly existence, we choose which train to board in order to fulfill our karma. Then the decision presents itself to us, and we decide whether to choose this or that family tie, this or that parent. But we would not be able to answer if we were asked now which incarnation would be better for us, whether in this or that family. So we are wiser before our incarnation than in our physical existence, because back then, before our embodiment, we made the right choice. This feeling that we have not become any wiser after incarnation than before cannot give rise to pride in what we have achieved. Why are we so much wiser before birth, when we can make the right choice? We would not be so much wiser on our own, but in our lives between death and new birth we are imbued with different forces than in the moment when we enter physical existence. When we enter physical existence, we are imbued with the substances of the earthly realms that are around us, with oxygen, nitrogen and so on; we absorb these into our bodily shells. When we discard our physical body, when we pass through the gate of death and live between death and a new birth, we are taken up by the beings of the higher hierarchies. Just as we live here in the different kingdoms, with animals, plants, and minerals, so we live there with the archai, with archangels and angels. We are integrated into their nature, just as we are integrated here into physical substances. Just as these substances assert their laws here, just as iron in the blood pulsates according to its laws, so the entities of the higher hierarchies are active in us between death and new birth, and their wisdom steers us in the right direction in existence. The entities of the higher hierarchies have wisdom within them, just as we have physical substances within us. And it is entirely justified when humility is the moral consequence that comes over us; when we truly realize what a small part of the sublime wisdom of these beings we have absorbed into ourselves in physical life. Between death and new birth we are embedded in the bosom of these entities of the higher hierarchies; we must surrender ourselves to them. To refuse to do so would be the same as wanting to live without absorbing the physical substances hydrogen, oxygen and so on. It would be absurd to want to live without full devotion to the beings of the higher hierarchies. Those who consider that they must surrender themselves to the beings of the higher hierarchies during the time between death and a new birth will ask themselves: What is the best preparation for that time? — And they will answer: The best preparation is to develop this feeling of devotion to the spiritual world now, between birth and death. — Veneration and devotion will permeate everything we take in when we imbue ourselves with the right feelings in the right way. Humility and devotion to the spiritual world will permeate all our feelings. When a person begins to think and live in this way, he also finds harmony with the world around him. These thoughts also regulate and harmonize his other perceptions. Many vices of the external world are carried into Theosophy. They do not come from 'Theosophy', but from the fact that people carry them in from outside. Let us imagine a person who has been hardworking and industrious in the outside world, but in such a way that those around him say: It is ambition that makes him industrious, he overdoes things, he ruins his strength, he pays no attention to the fact that this work must have limits. — Now he comes to Theosophy. There he encounters quite different ideas from those he had before. But this general characteristic, which he had outside, he can also carry into theosophy. There he hears, for instance, that a certain study is necessary to advance the soul. Well, so he studies, but he studies like a student who wants to outdo his colleagues. He should learn to exercise moderation in his efforts; he should learn to pay attention to how much he can achieve according to the karmically allotted powers; he should not overdo his theosophical studies. So he may have heard that it is good for spiritual development not to eat meat, and he does not ask himself: Is it also good for my body? He abstains from meat to accelerate his development. But we are taught by Theosophy: First I must investigate whether my karma allows me to follow the highest rules at once. We acquire calm and humble observation of our own karma, our own abilities and powers, when we engage in the right way with what spiritual science can give us. Especially those who are most advanced in occult matters observe the rule of balance most precisely. Sometimes, however, the opposite happens: when external circumstances are opposed to proper training, people want to force themselves, they push towards the set goal, they slave away in spirit to get an immediate answer to a question that arises. The advanced student never does this. He will first realize: This question is present. Then he examines himself: Are you able to get a full answer to the question right now? He says to himself: Wait a moment and see if the beings from the spiritual world will give you this answer. If he has to push and pull, he refrains for the time being. He knows he must wait. He can wait because he is imbued with the eternity of life and because he knows that karma, which he does not disregard, gives everyone what is meant to be theirs. Then at some point he will receive an inner hint and the powers of the spiritual world will reveal the answer to him. Perhaps this happens after years, perhaps only after several incarnations. This characterizes the right attitude: being able to wait, developing patience and equanimity, not rushing into anything. Those who allow the teachings of spiritual science to take effect on them in the right way will be able to master their feelings and perceptions through these teachings in such a way that they allow such equanimity, such harmony to be observed. With this attitude, we permeate the astral body from the ego in such a way that this astral body absorbs the truths from the spiritual world, if I may use a trivial comparison, like a sponge absorbs the water in which it is immersed. The spirit-knowledge gradually enters into the astral body, and the astral body is permeated by it. We live today in an age where it is necessary and where it is becoming more and more necessary that we imbue the astral body with spiritual wisdom. The times are changing more and more in such a way that the astral body of a person who passes through the gate of death and then enters future incarnations will be immersed in darkness, so that he will no longer be familiar with the spiritual world if he is not imbued with spiritual knowledge. But when he is imbued with the spiritual knowledge that we are now absorbing, then he will become a source of light, he will illuminate his surroundings. The wisdom that we are absorbing here will become the light in the spiritual world. If we now ask ourselves why Theosophy has only come today, why it was not here earlier, we have to say: It did not come because there was an ancient wisdom in the past that impressed itself on people without them having to do anything. It was found as a kind of heritage that people had received from the old world. With this inheritance they could penetrate into the spiritual world. It lasted until Christian times. But then man could no longer directly absorb spiritual wisdom. He must first permeate the soul with spiritual-scientific knowledge, and this will then be the power that causes man in the future to enter the spiritual world with the light of his soul. Human conditions change from epoch to epoch. All occultism knows that there is a wisdom that comes from the old moon and still worked in its remnants until the 15th and 16th centuries, so that when people came into the spiritual world, they saw the light that shone without their doing. Today, however, we can absorb as much of this ancient wisdom, which was handed down as an ancient heritage in humanity, as we want with our soul - it no longer shines after people have passed through the gate of death. Only the wisdom that people absorb through Christ, by saying, “Not I, but the Christ in me,” only this wisdom will be a shining light for the future passage of man through the gate of death. So we absorb the Christ-centered spiritual science in order to have a source of light in the astral body when we pass through the gate of death. But when we take in this Christ-imbued spiritual knowledge, when we permeate our astral body with it, then it does not remain mere wisdom; it permeates our feelings. We learn what happened on the old Saturn, on the old Sun and the old Moon, and what the task of the Earth is. If you read into the descriptions given in my 'Occult Science', you will feel that the description of Saturn has a completely different tone than the descriptions of the other planetary conditions. When reading about the Saturn condition, you can feel how the circumstances are described in a certain harshness. You can feel this in your soul, and that is necessary. You can feel the existence of the sun as if there were blossoming, sprouting life. You can feel the description of the moon as if a certain melancholy, gloomy trait runs through the multitude of concepts given there. A sensitive person can perceive this down to the sense of taste, down to the tongue. Fools will say: the descriptions are uneven, the style is not fixed. But we should know that this is necessary, and for what reason. We need to know why a melody of three particular notes is necessary, which must sound from the words, and when we know it, we can also transform it into feelings and send the feelings out into the world. The feelings that we ignite within us in this way are transformed. What is taken up into the astral body as wisdom is transformed into a voluntary surrender to world conditions, and this then takes hold of our etheric body. If we are wise, we prepare the way. The forces with which we descend into the next incarnations shape and permeate the etheric body. If we have imbued our ether body with true, right devotion, and it is then dissolved into the general cosmic ether, we have given the universe an ether body imbued with devotion that benefits the whole world. But if we are unpious, materialistic, then we discard an etheric body that has a dispersing, destructive effect when it is to be dissolved in the general world ether. To the extent that we are wise, we serve ourselves directly, but indirectly we also serve the world. To the extent that we are pious, we serve the world directly, because our piety is shared with the whole world. And spiritual science can give not only wisdom and piety, but also certainty and reflection on the life forces of the body. The very awareness of the connection with the spiritual world gives such life forces. I have mentioned before that Fichte, who stood at the gateway of Theosophy, knew something of these connections. He had such a sense of certainty of life that he could say, when speaking about the nature of man: “I lift my head boldly up to the threatening rocky mountains and to the raging waterfall and to the crashing clouds floating in a sea of fire and say: I am eternal and defy your power! Break down on me all, and you earth and you heaven mingle in wild tumult, and you elements all foam and rage and grind in wild struggle the last solar dust of the body that I call mine – my will alone with its firm plan shall float boldly and coldly over the ruins of the universe. For I have grasped my destiny, and it is more enduring than yours; it is eternal and I am eternal as it, “- assurance of life flows from the consciousness that man walks in the eternal of the spirit. Can a person become weak when he is rooted in the eternal of the spirit? It is spiritual knowledge that pours more and more strength into us. What comes to us from this power? Wisdom gives the astral body that through which we increasingly overcome the inhibiting forces. Piety regulates the forces and the correct structure of the ether body. But what flows into our body through the fact that we know about our connection with the eternal is the certainty of life, and it communicates itself to us right down to the forces of the physical body. When we possess this, then maya, illusion and deception recede from us. It is an illusion when someone says: our physical body only disintegrates into dust at our death. No. How the physical body was put together, how the person formed it, is not irrelevant. When such security in the eternal permeates this physical body, then we give back to the earth what we have appropriated as security for life. We fortify our planet with what we have acquired during our lifetime. We give our life security to the world through the physical body. In the disintegrating physical body, the disintegrating is only maja. He who follows the physical body through death sees that the degree of life security that man has acquired during life flows into our earth. Thus, through wisdom, piety and assurance of life, we strengthen that which we as human beings can work out as our best for the whole evolution of our earth in the astral body, in the etheric body and in the physical body. In this way we work on our planet Earth, but we also acquire a feeling for the fact that the human being does not stand alone, isolated, but that what he works out in his soul has value and significance for the whole. And just as no dust particle in the sun does not carry the laws of the universe within it, so no human being does not build and destroy the universe through what he does and does not do. We can give as much to the progressive world process as we take from it, as much as we can crumble away from it by not caring about the development, by not permeating ourselves with piety, by not acquiring a sense of security in life. Through these omissions, we contribute just as much to the destruction of the planet as we build it through the appropriation of wisdom, piety and life security. So we begin to sense what spiritual science can become for us emotionally when it takes hold of the whole person. |
| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Initiates and Clairvoyants
15 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Initiates and Clairvoyants
15 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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[ 1 ] During our last meeting here some time ago we spoke of the deeper currents of Christianity with particular reference to the Gospel of St. John and of the great images and ideas accessible to man when he reflects deeply upon this unique text. More than once it has been emphasized that the very depths of Christianity are illuminated by that Gospel and some of those who have heard lecture-courses on the same subject might feel inclined to ask: If the viewpoint reached through studying the Gospel of St. John may truly be called the most profound, can it be widened or enriched in any way by study of the other three Gospels of St. Luke, St. Matthew and St. Mark? Again, those who tend to be mentally lazy might ask: If the deepest depths of Christianity are to be found in the Gospel of St. John, is it still necessary to study Christianity as presented in the other Gospels, especially in the apparently less profound Gospel of St. Luke? [ 2 ] Anyone who might put this question believing such an attitude to be worthy of consideration would be labouring under a complete misapprehension. The scope of Christianity itself is infinite and light can be shed upon it from the most diverse standpoints. Furthermore, as the present course of lectures will show, although the Gospel of St. John is a document of untold profundity, there are facts which can be learnt from the Gospel of St. Luke and not from that of St. John. The ideas which in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John we came to recognize as among the most profound in Christianity, do not by any means comprise all its depths. It is possible to penetrate these depths from another starting-point altogether, basing our studies on the Gospel of St. Luke viewed in the light of Anthroposophy. [ 3 ] Let us once again recall facts in support of the statement that there is something to be gained from the Gospel of St. Luke even if the depths of the Gospel of St. John have been exhaustively studied. A fact revealed to the student of Anthroposophy by every line of the Gospel of St. John is that records such as the Gospels were composed by individuals who, as initiates and clairvoyants, possessed deeper insight than other men into the nature of existence. In everyday parlance the terms ‘initiate’ and ‘clairvoyant’ may be synonymous. But if our studies of Anthroposophy are to lead us into the deeper strata of spiritual life, we must distinguish between one who is an ‘initiate’ and one who is a ‘clairvoyant’, for they represent two distinct categories of human beings who have found their way into the spheres of super-sensible existence. There is a difference between an initiate and a clairvoyant, although an initiate may at the same time be a clairvoyant, and a clairvoyant an initiate of a certain grade. To distinguish with exactitude between these two categories of human beings you must recall the facts described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, remembering that strictly speaking there are three stages on the path leading beyond ordinary perception of the world. [ 4 ] The first kind of knowledge accessible to man can be described by saying: he beholds the world through his senses and assimilates what he perceives by means of his intellect and the other faculties of his soul. Beyond this, there are three further stages of knowledge, of cognition: the first is the stage of Imagination, Imaginative Cognition, the second is the stage of Inspiration, and the third is the stage of Intuition—but the term ‘Intuition’ must be understood in its true sense. [ 5 ] The faculty of Imaginative Cognition is possessed by one before whose eye of spirit all that lies behind the world of the senses is unfolded in mighty, cosmic pictures—but these pictures do not in the least resemble anything we call by this name in everyday life. Apart from the difference that the pictures revealed by Imaginative Cognition are independent of the laws of three-dimensional space, other characteristics make it impossible for them to be compared with anything in the world of the senses. [ 6 ] An idea of the world of Imagination may be gained in the following way. Suppose someone were able to extract from a plant in front of him everything perceptible to the sense of sight as ‘colour’, so that this hovered freely in the air. If he were to do nothing more than draw out the colour from the plant, a lifeless colour-form would hover before him. But to the clairvoyant such a colour-form is anything but a lifeless picture, for when he extracts the colour from the objects, then, through the preparation he has undergone and the exercises he has practised, this colour-picture begins to be animated by spirit just as in the physical world it was filled by the living substance of the plant. He then has before him, not a lifeless colour-form but freely moving coloured light, glistening, sparkling, full of inner life; each colour is the expression of the particular nature of a spiritual being imperceptible in the world of the physical senses. That is to say, the colour in the physical plant becomes for the clairvoyant the expression of spiritual beings. [ 7 ] Now imagine a world filled with such colour-forms, reflected in manifold ways and in perpetual metamorphosis; your vision must not be confined to the colours, as it might be when confronting a painting of glimmering colour-reflections, but you must imagine it all as the expression of beings of soul-and-spirit, so that you can say to yourselves: ‘When a green colour-picture flashes up it expresses to me the fact that an intellectual being is behind it; or when a reddish colour-picture flashes up it is to me the expression of a being with a fiery, violent nature.’ Now imagine this whole sea of interweaving colours I might equally well say a sea of interplaying sensations of tone, taste, or smell, for all these are the expressions of beings of soul-and-spirit behind them—and you have what is called the ‘Imaginative’ world, the world of Imagination. It is nothing to which the word ‘imagination’ (fancy) in its ordinary sense could be applied; it is a real world, requiring a mode of comprehension different from that derived from the senses. [ 8 ] Within this world of Imagination you encounter everything that is behind the sense-world and is imperceptible to the physical senses—for instance, the etheric and astral bodies. A man whose knowledge of the world is derived from this clairvoyant, Imaginative perception, becomes acquainted with the outward aspect of higher beings, just as you become acquainted with the outward, physical aspect of a man in the physical world who, let us say, passes in front of you in the street. You know more about him when there is an opportunity of talking with him. His words then give you an impression differing from the one he makes upon you when you look at him in the street. In the case of many a man whom you pass by (to mention this one example only) you cannot observe whether his soul is moved by inner joy or grief, sorrow or delight. But you can discover this if you converse with him. In the one case his outward aspect is conveyed to you through everything you can perceive without his assistance; in the other case he expresses his very self to you. The same applies to the beings of the super-sensible world. [ 9 ] A clairvoyant who comes to recognize these beings through Imaginative Cognition knows only their outward aspect. But he hears them give expression to their very selves when he rises from Imaginative Knowledge to Knowledge through Inspiration. He then has actual intercourse with these beings. They communicate to him from their inmost selves what and who they are. Inspiration is therefore a higher stage of knowledge than Imagination, and more is learnt about the beings of the world of soul-and-spirit at the stage of Inspiration than can be learnt through Imagination. [ 10 ] A still higher stage of knowledge is that of Intuition—but the word must be taken in its spiritual-scientific sense, not in that of day-to-day parlance, when anything that occurs to one, however hazy and nebulous, may be called ‘intuition’. In our sense, Intuition is a form of knowledge thanks to which we not only listen spiritually to what the beings communicate to us, but we become one with the very beings themselves. This is a very lofty stage of spiritual knowledge for it requires, at the outset, that there shall be in the human being that quality of universal love which causes him to make no distinction between himself and the other beings in his spiritual environment, but to pour forth his very self into the environment; thus he no longer remains outside but lives within the beings with whom he has spiritual communion. Because this can take place only in a spiritual world, the expression ‘Intuition’, i.e. ‘to dwell in the God’ is entirely appropriate. Thus there are three stages of knowledge of the super-sensible worlds: Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. [ 11 ] It is possible, of course, to attain all these three stages of super-sensible knowledge, but it may also be that in some one incarnation the stage of Imagination only is reached. Then the spheres of the spiritual world attainable through Inspiration and Intuition remain hidden from the clairvoyant concerned. In our present age it is not usual for a person to be led to the higher stages of spiritual experience before having passed through the stage of Imagination; it is hardly possible for anyone to omit the stage of Imagination and be led at once to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. But what would not be appropriate to-day, could happen and actually did happen in certain other periods of the evolution of man. [ 12 ] There were times when Imagination on the one hand and Inspiration and Intuition on the other were apportioned to different individuals. In certain Mystery-centres there were men whose eyes of spirit were open in such a way that they were clairvoyant in the sphere of Imagination and that world of symbolical pictures was accessible to them. Because with this grade of clairvoyance, such men said: ‘For this incarnation I renounce the attainment of the higher stages of Inspiration and Intuition’, they made themselves capable of seeing clearly and with exactitude in the world of Imagination. They underwent much training in order to develop vision of that world. [ 13 ] But one thing was essential for them. Anyone who wants to confine his vision to the world of Imagination and gives up any attempt to advance to Inspiration and Intuition, lives in a world of uncertainty. This world of flowing Imaginations is, so to say, boundless, and if left to its own resources the soul floats hither and thither without being really aware of its direction or goal. In those times, therefore, and among peoples where certain human beings renounced the higher stages of knowledge, it was necessary for those whose clairvoyance had reached the stage of Imagination to attach themselves with utter devotion to leaders whose capacities of spiritual perception were open to Inspiration and Intuition. For Inspiration and Intuition alone can give such certainty in regard to the spiritual world that a man knows with full assurance: Thither leads the path—towards a definite goal! Without Inspiration it is not possible to say: There is the path; I must follow it in order to reach a goal! Whoever, therefore, cannot say this must entrust himself to the wise guidance of someone who says it to him. Hence in so many quarters it is constantly emphasized, and rightly so, that whoever rises, to begin with, to the stage of Imagination, must attach himself inwardly to a Guru—a leader who gives both direction and aim to his experiences. [ 14 ] It was also advisable in certain epochs—but this is no longer the case to-day—to allow other individuals to omit the stage of Imagination and to lead them at once to Inspiration or, if possible, to Intuition. Such men renounced the possibility of perceiving the Imaginative pictures of the spiritual world around them; they lent themselves only to such impressions from the spiritual world as issue from the inner life of the beings there. They listened with their ears of spirit to the utterances of the beings of the spiritual world. Suppose there is a screen between you and another man whom you do not see but only hear him speaking behind the screen. It is certainly possible to renounce pictorial vision of the spiritual world in order to be led more quickly to the stage of hearing the utterances of the spiritual beings. No matter whether a person sees the pictures of the world of Imagination or not—if he is able to apprehend with spiritual ears what the beings in the spiritual world communicate regarding themselves, we say of him that he is endowed with the power to hear the ‘inner word’—in contrast to the outer word used in the physical world between man and man. We can thus conceive that there are people who, without beholding the world of Imaginations, are endowed with the power to apprehend the inner word and can hear and communicate the utterances of spiritual beings. [ 15 ] There were periods in the evolution of humanity when, within the Mysteries, these two forms of super-sensible cognition worked in co-operation. Each individual who had renounced the faculty of perception possessed by another, could develop greater clarity and definition in his own faculty and at certain periods this resulted in a truly wonderful co-operation within the Mysteries. There were clairvoyants who had specially trained themselves to see the world of Imaginative pictures, and there were others who, having passed over the world of Imagination, had trained themselves to receive the inner word into their souls through Inspiration. And so the one could communicate to the other the experiences made possible by his particular training. This was possible in times when some degree of confidence reigned between one man and another; to-day it is out of the question, simply because of the character of our age. Nowadays one man has not such strong belief in another that he would listen to his descriptions of the pictures of the world of Imagination and then, honestly believing those descriptions to be accurate, supplement them with what he himself knows through Inspiration. Nowadays, everyone wants to see it all himself—and that is natural in our age. Very few people would be satisfied with a one-sided development of Imagination such as was taken for granted in certain epochs. In our present time, therefore, it is necessary for a man to be led through the three stages of higher knowledge without omitting any one of them. [ 16 ] At each stage of super-sensible knowledge we encounter the great mysteries connected with the Christ Event, about which all three forms of cognition—Imaginative, Inspirational, Intuitive—have infinitely much to say. [ 17 ] If with this in mind we turn our attention to the four Gospels, we may say that the Gospel of St. John is written from the vantage-point of one who in the fullest sense was an Initiate, cognisant at the stage of Intuition of the mysteries of the super-sensible world, and who therefore describes the Christ Event as revealed by the vision of Intuition. But if close attention is paid to the distinctive characteristics of St. John's Gospel it will have to be admitted that the features standing out most clearly are presented from the standpoint of Inspiration and Intuition, while everything originating from the pictures of Imagination is shadowy and lacks definition. Thus if we disregard what was still revealed to him through Imagination, we may call the writer of St. John's Gospel the messenger of everything relating to the Christ Event that is vouchsafed to one endowed with the power of apprehending the inner word at the stage of Intuition. Hence he describes the mysteries of Christ's Kingdom as receiving their character through the inner Word, or Logos. Knowledge through Inspiration and Intuition is the source of the Gospel of St. John. [ 18 ] It is different in the case of the other three Gospels, and not one of their writers expressed his message as clearly as did the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. [ 19 ] In a short but remarkable preface it is said, in effect, that many others had previously attempted to collect and set forth the stories in circulation concerning the events in Palestine; but that for the sake of accuracy and order the writer of this Gospel is now undertaking to present the things which ... and now come significant words ... could be understood by those who from the beginning were ‘eye-witnesses and servants (ministers) of the Word’—that is the usual rendering. The aim of the writer of this Gospel is therefore to communicate what eye-witnesses—it would be better to say ‘seers’ (Selbstseher)—and servants of the Word had to say. In the sense of St. Luke's Gospel, ‘seers’ are men who through Imaginative Cognition can penetrate into the world of pictures and there behold the Christ Event; people specially trained to perceive these Imaginations are seers with accurate and clear vision at the same time as being ‘servants of the Word’—a significant phrase—and the writer of St. Luke's Gospel uses their communications as a foundation. He does not say ‘possessors’ of the Word, because such persons would have reached the stage of Inspiration in the fullest sense; he says ‘servants’ of the Word—people who could count less upon Inspirations than upon Imaginations in their own knowledge but for whom communications from the world of Inspiration were nevertheless available. The results of Inspirational Cognition were communicated to them and they could proclaim what their inspired teachers had made known to them. They were ‘servants’, not ‘possessors’ of the Word. [ 20 ] Thus the Gospel of St. Luke is founded upon the communications of seers, themselves knowers of the world of Imagination; they are those who, having learnt to express their visions of that world through means made possible by their inspired teachers, had themselves become ‘servants of the Word’. [ 21 ] Here again is an example of the exactitude of the Gospel records and of the need to understand the words in the strictly literal sense. In texts based upon spiritual knowledge, everything is exact to a degree often undreamed of by modern man. [ 22 ] But we must now again remember—as always when such matters are considered from the anthroposophical standpoint—that, for spiritual science, the Gospels themselves are not original sources of knowledge in the actual sense. One who stands strictly on the ground of spiritual science will not necessarily take a statement to be the truth simply because it stands in the Gospels. The spiritual scientist does not draw his knowledge from written documents but from the yields of spiritual investigation. Communications made by beings of the spiritual world to the initiate and the clairvoyant in the present age—these are the sources of knowledge for spiritual science. And in a certain respect these sources are the same in our age as in the times just described to you. Hence in our age too, those who have insight into the world of Imagination may be called clairvoyants, but only those who can rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition can be called ‘Initiates’. In our present age the expressions ‘clairvoyant’ and ‘initiate’ are not necessarily synonymous. [ 23 ] The content of the Gospel of St. John could be based only upon knowledge possessed by an Initiate capable of rising to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. The contents of the other three Gospels could be based upon the communications of persons endowed with Imaginative clairvoyance but not yet able themselves to rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. If therefore we adhere strictly to this distinction, St. John's Gospel is based upon Initiation, and the other three, especially that of St. Luke—according to what the writer himself says—upon Clairvoyance. Because this is the case, and because everything that is revealed to the vision of a highly trained clairvoyant is introduced, this Gospel gives us well-defined pictures of what is contained in the Gospel of St. John in faint impressions only. In order to make the difference even more obvious, let me say the following. [ 24 ] Although it would hardly ever be the case to-day, let us suppose a man were initiated in such a way that the worlds of Inspiration and of Intuition were open to him but that he was not clairvoyant in the world of Imagination. Suppose such a man met another, perhaps not initiated but to whom the whole world of Imaginations was open. This man would be able to communicate a great deal to the first who might possibly only be able to explain it through Inspiration but could not himself see it, having no faculty of clairvoyance. There are many to-day who are clairvoyant without being initiates; the reverse is hardly ever the case. Nevertheless it might conceivably happen that someone who had been initiated, could not, although possessing the gift of clairvoyance, for some reason or other perceive the Imaginations in a particular instance. A clairvoyant would then be able to tell such a man a great deal as yet unknown to him. [ 25 ] It must be strongly emphasized that Anthroposophy relies upon no other source than that of the Initiates, and that the texts of the Gospels are not the actual sources of its knowledge. The fount of anthroposophical knowledge is investigated to-day independently of any historical records. But then we turn to the records and compare the findings of spiritual-scientific research with them. What Anthroposophy can at all times discover about the Christ Event without the help of any documentary record is found again in the Gospel of St. John, presented in a most sublime way. Hence its supreme value, for it shows us that at the time when it was composed a man was living who wrote as one initiated into the spiritual world can write to-day. The same voice, as it were, that can be heard to-day, sounds across to us from the depths of the centuries. [ 26 ] The same can be said of the other Gospels, including that of St. Luke. It is not the pictures delineated by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke that are for us the source of knowledge of the higher worlds; the source for us lies in the results of ascent into the super-sensible world. When we speak of the Christ Event, a source for us is also that great tableau of pictures and Imaginations appearing when we direct our gaze to the beginning of our era. We compare what thus reveals itself with the pictures and Imaginations described in the Gospel of St. Luke; and this course of lectures will show how the Imaginative pictures accessible to man to-day compare with the descriptions given in that Gospel. [ 27 ] The truth is that there is only one source for spiritual investigation when directed to the events of the past. This source does not lie in external records; no stones dug out of the earth, no documents preserved in archives, no treatises written by historians either with or without insight—none of these things is the source of spiritual science. What we are able to read in the imperishable Akashic Chronicle—that is the source of spiritual science. The possibility exists of knowing what has happened in the past without reference to external records. [ 28 ] Modern man has thus two ways of acquiring information about the past. He can take the documents and the historical records when he wants to learn something about outer events, or the religious scripts when he wants to learn something about the conditions of spiritual life. Or else he can ask: What have those men to say before whose spiritual vision lies that imperishable Chronicle known as the ‘Akashic Chronicle’—that mighty tableau in which there is registered whatever has at any time come to pass in the evolution of the world, of the earth and of humanity? [ 29 ] Whoever raises his consciousness into the spiritual world learns gradually to read this chronicle. It is no ordinary script. Think of the course of events, just as they happened, presented to your spiritual vision; think, let us say, of the Emperor Augustus and all his deeds standing before you in a cloud-like picture. The picture stands there before the spiritual-scientific investigator and he can at any time evoke the experience anew. He requires no external evidence. He need only direct his gaze to a definite point in cosmic or human happenings and the events will present themselves to him in a spiritual picture. In this way the spiritual gaze can survey the ages of the past, and what is there perceived is recorded as the findings of spiritual investigation. [ 30 ] What happened at the beginning of our era can be perceived by spiritual vision and compared, for example, with what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Then the spiritual investigator recognizes that at that time too there were seers able to behold the past; and moreover the accounts they give of happenings in their own times can be compared with what is revealed to-day by spiritual investigation of the Akashic Chronicle. [ 31 ] Again and again it must be realized that we do not have recourse to outer records but to the actual findings of spiritual investigation and that we then try to rediscover these results in the outer records. The value of the records themselves is thereby enhanced and we can come to a decision about the truth of their contents on the strength of our own investigations. They lie before us as, even more faithful expression of the truth because we ourselves are able to recognize the truth. But a statement such as this must not be made without at the same time affirming that this ‘reading in the Akashic Chronicle’ is by no means as easy as observation of events in the physical world! With the help of an example I should like to give you an idea of certain difficulties that may arise. [ 32 ] We know from elementary Anthroposophy that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. The moment we are no longer observing man on the physical plane but rise into the spiritual world, the difficulties begin. When we have a human being physically before us, we see a unity formed by physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. Whoever observes a human being during waking life has all this before him as unity, but if it is necessary for some reason to rise into the higher worlds in order to observe a human being, the difficulties at once begin. Suppose, for example, we wish to observe a human being in his totality while he is asleep during the night, and rise into the world of Imagination in order, let us say, to perceive his astral body—which is now outside the physical body. The human being is now divided into two. [ 33 ] What I am describing will seldom occur in this particular form, for observation of the human being is comparatively easy, but it will help to convey an idea of the difficulties in question. Suppose someone goes into a room where a number of people are asleep. He sees their physical bodies lying there and, if he is clairvoyant, their etheric bodies too; at a higher stage of clairvoyance he sees their astral bodies. But in the astral world everything interpenetrates—including, of course, the astral bodies of human beings. Although it would not often happen to a trained clairvoyant, when looking at a number of sleeping people he might mistake which astral body belonged to some particular physical body below. As I said, it is an unlikely occurrence because this is one of the first stages of actual vision and because anyone who attains it is well trained in how to distinguish in such a case. But the difficulties become very considerable when spiritual beings—not human beings—are observed in the spiritual world. As a matter of fact the difficulties are already great if a human being is to be observed, not as he is at present, but in his totality, as he passes through incarnations. [ 34 ] Thus if you observe a human being now living and ask yourself: Where was his Ego in his previous incarnation? you have to go through the Devachanic world to reach his former incarnation. You must be able to establish which Ego has always belonged to the preceding incarnations of the person in question. You must hold together, in an intricate way, the continuous Ego and the various stages down on the Earth. Mistakes are very possible here and error can very easily occur when looking for an Ego in its earlier bodies. In the higher worlds, therefore, it is not easy to maintain the connection between everything belonging to a human personality and his former incarnations as inscribed in the Akashic Chronicle. [ 35 ] Suppose someone has before him a man—let us call him John Smith—and as a clairvoyant or initiate he asks: ‘Who were the physical ancestors of this man?’—Let us assume that all external records have been lost and there is only the Akashic Chronicle upon which to rely. It would be a matter of having to discover from the Akashic Chronicle the physical ancestors of the man—the father, mother, grandfather, and so on, in order to see how the physical body evolved in the line of physical descent. But then there might be the further question: ‘What were the earlier incarnations of this man?’ To answer that question an entirely different path must be taken than when looking for the physical ancestors. It may be necessary to go back through long, long ages in order to arrive at the previous incarnations of the Ego. Already you have two streams: the physical body as it stands before you is not a completely new creation, for it springs from the ancestors in the line of physical heredity; nor is the Ego a completely new creation, for it is linked with its previous incarnations. [ 36 ] The same holds good for the intermediate members, the etheric and astral bodies. Most of you know that the etheric body is not a completely new creation but that it too may have taken a path leading through the most diverse forms. The etheric body of Zarathustra reappeared in Moses. It was the same etheric body. If we were to seek out the physical ancestors of Moses this would give us one line; if we were to seek out the ancestors of the etheric body of Moses we should get another, quite different line; here we should come to the etheric body of Zarathustra and to other etheric bodies. [ 37 ] Just as we have to trace quite different lines for the physical body and the etheric body, the same applies to the astral body. Each separate member of the human being might lead to very diverse streams. Thus the etheric body may be the etheric re-embodiment of an etheric body that belonged to a different individuality altogether—not by any means the same in which the Ego was formerly incarnated. And the same can be said of the astral body. [ 38 ] When we rise into the higher worlds in order to investigate the several members of a human being, the individual streams all take different directions, and in following them we come to very intricate processes in the spiritual world. Whoever wishes to understand a human being from the vantage-point of spiritual investigation, must describe him not merely as a descendant of his ancestors, not merely as having derived his etheric body or his astral body from this or that being, but he must describe the paths taken by all these four members until they unite in the present individual. This cannot be done all at once. For instance, we may trace the path followed by the etheric body and reach important conclusions. Someone else may trace the path of the astral body. The one may lay more stress on the etheric body, the other on the astral body, and frame his descriptions accordingly. To those who do not notice everything said about an individual by men who are clairvoyant, it will make no difference whether one says this and another that; it will seem to them that the same entity is being described. In their eyes the one who describes the physical personality only and the other who describes the etheric body are both speaking of the same being—John Smith. [ 39 ] All this can give you an idea of the complexity of circumstances and conditions encountered when it is a question of describing the nature of any phenomenon in the world—whether a human or any other being—from the standpoint of clairvoyant research or Initiation-knowledge. I was obliged to say the foregoing because it will help you to understand that only the most extensive investigation in the Akashic Chronicle can present any being in full clarity to the eyes of spirit. [ 40 ] The Being who stands before us as the Gospel of St. John describes Him—no matter whether we speak of Him as Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism by John or as Christ after the Baptism—that Being stands before us with an Ego, an astral body, an etheric body and physical body. To give a full description according to the Akashic Chronicle of the Being who was Christ Jesus, we must trace the paths traversed by the four members of His nature in the course of the evolution of humanity. Only then can we rightly understand Him. It is here a question of grasping the meaning of the information regarding the Christ Event given by modern spiritual-scientific investigation, for light must be shed on apparent contradictions in the four Gospels. [ 41 ] I have often pointed out why purely materialistic research cannot recognize the supreme value and profundity of the Gospel of St. John: it is because those who carry out this research cannot understand that a higher Initiate sees differently, more deeply, than the others. Those who have doubts about the Gospel of St. John attempt to establish a kind of conformity between the three synoptic Gospels. But conformity will be difficult to establish and sustain if it is based only upon the external, material happenings. What will be of particular importance in tomorrow's lecture, namely the life of Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism by John, is described by two Evangelists, by the writers of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and external, materialistic observation will find differences there that are in no way less than those which must be assumed to exist between the Gospel of St. John and the other three Gospels. Let us take the facts: The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates how the birth of the Creator of Christianity was announced beforehand, how the birth took place, how Magi, having seen the ‘star’, came from the East, being led by the star to the place where the Redeemer was born; he describes how Herod's attention was aroused and how, in order to escape the massacre of the babes in Bethlehem, the parents of the Redeemer fled with the child to Egypt; when Herod was dead it was made known to Joseph, the father of Jesus, that they might return, but for fear of Herod's successor they went to Nazareth instead of returning to Bethlehem. To-day I will leave aside the Baptist's proclamation, but I want to draw attention to the fact that if we compare the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew we find the annunciation of Jesus of Nazareth described quite differently; the one Gospel relates that it was made to Mary, the other that it was made to Joseph. From the Gospel of St. Luke we learn that the parents of Jesus of Nazareth lived at that place and went to Bethlehem on the occasion of the enrolling. While they were there, Jesus was born. Then came the circumcision, after eight days—nothing is said about a flight into Egypt—and a short time afterwards the child was presented in the temple; the customary offering having been made, the parents returned with the child to Nazareth. A remarkable incident is then described—how on the occasion of a visit with his parents to Jerusalem the twelve-year-old Jesus remained behind in the temple, how his parents sought and found him there among those who expounded the scriptures, how among the learned doctors of the Law he gave evidence of profound knowledge of the scriptures. Then it is related how the parents took the child home with them again, how he grew up ... and we hear nothing particular about him from that time until the Baptism by John. [ 42 ] Here we have two accounts of Jesus of Nazareth before the Christ descended into him. Whoever wishes to reconcile the accounts must consider how, according to the ordinary materialistic view, he can reconcile the story in the Gospel of St. Matthew that directly after the birth of Jesus his parents, Joseph and Mary, fled with the child into Egypt and subsequently returned, with the other story of the presentation in the temple narrated by St. Luke. [ 43 ] In these lectures we shall find that what seems a complete contradiction to the ordinary mind will be revealed as truth in the light of spiritual investigation. Both accounts are true!—although presented as accounts of events in the physical world they are in apparent contradiction. Precisely the three synoptic Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke ought to compel people to adopt a spiritual conception of events in the history of humanity. For it is surely obvious that nothing is attained by ignoring apparent contradictions in such records or by speaking of ‘fiction’ when realities prove too great an obstacle. [ 44 ] We shall have opportunity here to speak of things of which there was no occasion to speak in detail when we were studying the Gospel of St. John namely, the events that took place before the Baptism by John and the descent of the Christ into the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Many riddles of vital significance concerning the essence of Christianity will find their solution when—as the outcome of research into the Akashic Chronicle—we hear of the being and nature of Jesus of Nazareth before the Christ took possession of his three bodies. [ 45 ] Tomorrow we shall begin by considering the nature and the life of Jesus of Nazareth as revealed in the Akashic Chronicle, and then ask ourselves: How does the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth compare with what is described in the Gospel of St. Luke as imparted by those who at that time were ‘seers’ or ‘servants’ of the Word, of the Logos? |
| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Love and Compassion, the Mission of the Bodhisattvas and the Buddha
16 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Love and Compassion, the Mission of the Bodhisattvas and the Buddha
16 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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[ 1 ] Throughout the Christian era the Gospel of St. John was the text that made the strongest impression upon those who were trying to deepen their understanding of the cosmic mysteries of Christianity. This was the Gospel used by all the Christian mystics who were striving to mould their lives in accordance with its presentation of the personality and nature of Christ Jesus. [ 2 ] In the course of the centuries a somewhat different attitude was adopted by Christian humanity to the Gospel of St. Luke—an attitude altogether in keeping with the indications given in the last lecture, from another point of view, regarding the contrast between these two Gospels. Whereas the Gospel of St. John was in a certain sense a text for mystics, the Gospel of St. Luke was always a devotional book for humble folk, for those whose simplicity and innocence of heart enabled them to rise into the sphere of truly Christian feeling. The Gospel of St. Luke has been a book of devotion throughout the centuries. For all those who were bowed down with sorrow or suffering it was a fount of consolation, speaking with such tenderness of the great Comforter, the great Benefactor of mankind, the Saviour of the heavy-laden and oppressed. It was a book to which especially those who longed to be filled with Christian love turned their hearts and minds, because the power of love is revealed more clearly in this Gospel than in any other Christian document. Those who were in any way conscious—and strictly speaking this applies to everyone—of having the burden of some guilt upon their hearts, at all times found consolation and edification when they turned to the Gospel of St. Luke and understood its message. They could say to themselves: Christ Jesus came not only for the righteous but also for sinners; He sat with publicans and transgressors. Whereas much preparation is necessary before the full power of St. John's Gospel can be realized, it may be said of St. Luke's Gospel that no nature is too immature to be aware of the warmth streaming from it. [ 3 ] From the earliest times this Gospel was an inspiration to the most childlike of men. All that remains childlike in the human soul from tenderest youth to ripest age has always felt drawn to the Gospel of St. Luke. And as regards pictorial representations of Christian truths and what art has acquired from these truths, we find that although much is derived from the other Gospels, the indications for the most intimate messages conveyed to the human heart by forms of art, by paintings, are to be found precisely in the Gospel of St. Luke. The portrayals of the deep connection between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist have their source in this imperishable Gospel. [ 4 ] Anyone who allows it to work upon his soul will find that from beginning to end it gives expression to the principle of love, compassion and innocence—in a certain sense, childlike innocence. Where else do we find such a tender portrayal of the childlike nature as in what is said of the childhood of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of St. Luke? The reason will become clear as we penetrate more deeply into the words of this wonderful text. [ 5 ] It will be necessary now to say certain things that may seem paradoxical to those of you who have heard other lectures or courses of lectures given by me on the same subject. But if you will wait for the explanations to be given in the next lectures, you will realize that what I shall say is in harmony with what you have previously heard from me about Christ Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. The whole complicated range of truth cannot be presented all at once, and today I shall have to indicate an aspect of the Christian truths that may seem not to tally exactly with what has been said on some previous occasion. Our procedure must be, first to show how the separate currents of truth have developed and then the mutual agreement and harmony that finally become apparent. The Gospel of St. John was deliberately our starting-point, and I was naturally unable to indicate more than part of the truth in the various courses of lectures. What was said still holds good, as we shall see, although our attention to-day must be turned to an unusual aspect of Christian truths. [ 6 ] A wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke describes how an Angel appeared to the shepherds in the fields and announced to them that the Saviour of the world was born. Then come the words: ‘And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host.’ Picture the scene to yourselves: as the shepherds look upwards the heavens open and the Beings of the spiritual world are revealed in sublime pictures. [ 7 ] What was the proclamation to the shepherds? It was clothed in momentous words, words that resounded through the whole of evolution and have become the Christmas message. Rightly rendered, these words would be as follows: ‘The Divine Beings manifest themselves from on high, that peace may reign on the Earth below among men who are filled with good will!’ [ 8 ] The usual expression, ‘glory’ is entirely out of place here. The sentence is correct in the form I have now given, and the contrast should be clearly emphasized. What the shepherds saw was the manifestation of spiritual Beings from on high, and the revelation occurred when it did in order that peace might pour into human hearts that were filled with a good will. [ 9 ] As we shall see, many mysteries of Christianity are embodied in these words, provided only they are rightly understood. But certain preliminaries are necessary if light is to be thrown on this momentous proclamation. Above all we must endeavour to study the accounts available to clairvoyant faculties from the Akashic Chronicle. With opened eyes of spirit we must contemplate the epoch when Christ Jesus came to humanity, and ask ourselves: What was the historical background and the source of the spiritual impulse poured into Earth evolution at that time? [ 10 ] Currents of spiritual life from many different sides converged and flowed into the evolution of humanity at that point. The very diverse world-conceptions that had arisen in various regions of the Earth in the course of the ages converged in Palestine as though into one central point and came to expression in the events there. We may therefore ask: What are the sources of these streams? [ 11 ] It was indicated yesterday that in the Gospel of St. Luke we have the fruits of Imaginative Cognition, and that this knowledge is gained in the form of pictures. In the events just mentioned a picture is placed before us of the manifestation to the shepherds of spiritual Beings from on high: first, the picture is of a spiritual Being, an Angel, who is followed by a ‘heavenly host’. Here we must ask: What does a clairvoyant initiated into the mysteries of existence see in this picture—which he can always evoke again at will—when he gazes into the Akashic Chronicle? What was it that was revealed to the shepherds? What was this angelic host, and whence did it come? [ 12 ] This picture portrays one of the great spiritual streams that flowed through the process of evolution, gradually rising higher and higher, until at the time of the events in Palestine its light could shine down upon the Earth only from spiritual heights. From the angelic host revealed to the shepherds, we are led back, in deciphering the Akashic Chronicle, to one of the greatest streams of spiritual life in the evolution of humanity, a stream which, several centuries before the coming of Christ, spread far and wide in the form of Buddhism. An investigator of the Akashic Chronicle who traces back into previous ages the origin of the revelation to the shepherds, is led, strange as it will seem to you, to the ‘Enlightenment’ of the great Buddha. The light that shone out in India, setting men's hearts and minds astir as the religion of love and compassion, as a great world-conception, and even to-day is spiritual nourishment for a very large section of humanity—that light appeared again in the revelation to the shepherds! For it too was to stream into the revelation in Palestine. The account given at the beginning of St. Luke's Gospel cannot be understood unless we consider (again from the vantage-point of spiritual-scientific research) the significance of Buddha and what his revelation actually brought about in the course of human evolution. [ 13 ] When Buddha was born in the East, five to six centuries before our era, there appeared in him an Individuality who had lived many times on Earth and in the course of his previous incarnations had already reached the very lofty stage of human development designated by an Oriental expression as that of a ‘Bodhisattva’. Some of you have heard lectures on different aspects of the nature of the Bodhisattvas. In the lecture-course Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the physical World, given in Düsseldorf some months ago, I spoke of how the Bodhisattvas are related to the whole of cosmic evolution; in Munich, in the lecture-course The East in the Light of the West1 they were referred to from a different point of view. To-day we shall consider the nature of the Bodhisattvas from still another side and you will gradually perceive the harmony between the single truths. [ 14 ] He who became a Buddha had first to be a Bodhisattva; individual development to the rank of Buddhahood is preceded by the stage of ‘Bodhisattva’. We will now think of the nature of the Bodhisattvas in relation to the evolution of humanity considered from the viewpoint of spiritual science. [ 15 ] The capacities and faculties possessed and developed by human beings in any particular epoch were not always in existence. To believe that the same faculties possessed by man to-day were also present in primeval times is due to incapacity and unwillingness to see beyond the present. Man's faculties, everything he is able to accomplish and know, vary from epoch to epoch. His faculties to-day are developed to the point where with his own power of reasoning he is justified in saying: ‘I recognize this or that truth by means of my intelligence and my reason; I can recognize what is moral or immoral, logical or illogical in a certain respect. But it would be a mistake to believe that these capacities for distinguishing the logical from the illogical or the moral from the immoral, were always to be found in human nature. They came into existence and developed gradually. What man can accomplish to-day by means of his own capacities, he had at one time to be taught—as a child is taught by its parents or teachers—by Beings who though incarnated among men were more highly developed by virtue of their spiritual faculties and could hold converse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings even loftier than themselves. [ 16 ] Individualities who, though themselves incarnated in physical bodies, could have intercourse with still higher, non-incarnated Individualities, existed at all times. For example, before men acquired the faculty of logical thinking by means of which they themselves are able to think logically to-day, they were obliged to learn from certain teachers. These teachers themselves were not able to think logically through faculties developed in the physical body itself, but only through their intercourse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings in higher realms. Such teachers proclaimed the principles of logic and morality from revelations they received from higher worlds in times before men themselves were able, out of their own earthly nature, to think logically or discover the principles of morality. The Bodhisattvas are one category of Beings who, though incarnated in physical bodies, have inter-course with divine-spiritual Beings in order to bring down and impart to men what they themselves learn from their divine Teachers. The Bodhisattva is a Being incarnated in a human body, whose faculties enable him to commune with divine-spiritual Beings. [ 17 ] Before Gautama Buddha became a ‘Buddha’, he was a Bodhisattva, that is to say, an Individuality who, in the Mysteries, was able to commune with higher, divine-spiritual Beings. In remote, primeval ages of Earth evolution, a Being such as the Bodhisattva was entrusted in the higher world with a definite task, a definite mission, which he continues to discharge. [ 18 ] When the Earth was still in early stages of development, even before the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs, the Bodhisattva who was incarnated and became Buddha six hundred years before our era, was assigned a task which he never abandoned. From epoch to epoch, through every age, his work was to impart to Earth evolution as much as the beings concerned enabled it to receive. For each Bodhisattva there comes a time when, with the mission entrusted to him in the primeval past, he reaches a definite point—the point when what he has been able to let flow into humanity ‘from above’ can become a faculty of man's own. A human faculty to-day was once a faculty of divine-spiritual Beings brought down to man from spiritual heights by the Bodhisattvas. Hence there comes a time when a spiritual emissary such as a Bodhisattva can say; ‘I have accomplished my mission. Humanity has now received that for which it has been prepared through many, many epochs.’ Having reached this point, the Bodhisattva can become ‘Buddha’. That is to say, the time has come when he, as a Being with the particular mission to which I have referred, need no longer incarnate in a human physical body; he has incarnated for the last time in such a body and need not incarnate again as a spiritual emissary in the above sense. This point of time arrived for Gautama Buddha. The task assigned to him had led him again and again down to the Earth; but he appeared in his final incarnation as Bodhisattva when, after his Enlightenment, he became Buddha. He incarnated in a human body that had developed to the highest possible stage those faculties which hitherto had had to be bestowed from above, but were now gradually to become human faculties in the fullest sense. When a Bodhisattva has succeeded through his foregoing development in making a human body so perfect that it can itself evolve the faculties connected with his particular mission, he need not incarnate again. He then hovers in spiritual realms, sending his influence into humanity, furthering and guiding human affairs. Henceforth it is the task of men to develop the gifts formerly bestowed upon them from heavenly heights, saying to themselves: ‘We must now ourselves develop in a way that will further elaborate the faculties acquired in full measure for the first time in the incarnation when the Bodhisattva became Buddha.’ [ 19 ] When the Being who works through successive epochs as Bodhisattva appears as one into whose human nature every faculty that previously flowed down from heavenly heights has been integrated and can now be expressed through him as an individual—that Being is a ‘Buddha’. All this is revealed by Gautama Buddha. Had he, as Bodhisattva, withdrawn earlier from his mission, men could no longer have been blessed by the bestowal of these faculties from on high. But when evolution had progressed so far that these faculties could be present in a single human being on Earth, the seed was laid that would enable men in the future to develop them in their own natures. Thus the Individuality who, as long as he was a Bodhisattva, did not enter fully into the human form but towered upwards into heavenly heights—this Individuality now for the first time drew completely into human nature and was fully embodied in that one incarnation. But then he again withdrew. For with this incarnation as Buddha a certain quotum of revelations had been given to humanity, thereafter to be developed further in men themselves. Hence the Bodhisattva, having become Buddha, might withdraw from the Earth to spiritual heights, might abide there and guide the affairs of humanity from regions where only a certain power of clairvoyance is able to behold him. [ 20 ] What, then, was the task of that supremely great Individuality usually called the ‘Buddha’? If we want to understand the task and mission of this Buddha in the sense of true esoteriscism, we must realize the following. The cognitive faculty of mankind has developed gradually. Attention has repeatedly been drawn to the fact that in the Atlantean epoch a large proportion of humanity was clairvoyant and able to gaze into the spiritual worlds, and that certain remnants of this old clairvoyance were still present in post-Atlantean times. After the Atlantean epoch, in the periods of the civilizations of ancient India, Persia, Egypt and Chaldea—even as late as the Graeco-Latin age—there were numbers of human beings, many more than modern man would ever imagine, who possessed the heritage of this old clairvoyance; the astral plane was open to them and they could see into the hidden depths of existence. Perception of man's etheric body was quite usual in the Graeco-Latin age; numbers of people were able to see the human head surrounded by an etheric cloud that has gradually become entirely concealed within the head. [ 21 ] But humanity was to advance to a form of knowledge acquired through the outer senses and through the spiritual faculties connected with the senses. Man was gradually to emerge altogether from the spiritual world and to engage in pure sense-observation, in intellectual, logical thinking. By degrees he was to make his way to non-clairvoyant cognition, because he must pass through this stage in order to regain clairvoyant knowledge in the future. But such knowledge will then be united with the fruits of cognition based upon the senses and the intellect. [ 22 ] At the present time we are living in an intermediate period. We look back to a past when man was clairvoyant, and to a future when this will again be the case. In our present age the majority of human beings are dependent upon what they perceive with their senses and grasp with their intellect. There are, of course, certain heights even in sensory perception and in knowledge yielded by the intellect and reasoning mind; everywhere there are ‘degrees of knowledge’. One person in a certain incarnation passes through his existence on Earth with little insight into what is moral, and little compassion for his fellow-men. We say of him that he is at a low stage of morality. Another passes through life with very slightly developed intellectual capacities; we call him a person of low intelligence. But these powers of intellectual cognition are capable of rising to a very lofty level. A man whom, in Fichte's sense, we call a ‘moral genius’ reaches the highest level of moral Imagination but there are many intermediate stages. Without possessing clairvoyant faculties we can reach this height only by ennobling powers that are at the disposal of ordinary humanity. These stages had to be attained by man in the course of Earth evolution. What man knows to-day to a certain extent through his own intelligence and also what he attains through his own moral strength, namely the consciousness that he must have compassion with the sufferings and sorrows of others—this consciousness could not have been acquired by a human being in primeval times through his own efforts. It can be said to-day that such insight is unfolded by a healthy moral sense, even without clairvoyance, and to an increasing extent men will come to realize not only that compassion is the very highest virtue but that without love humanity can make no progress. Man's moral sense will grow steadily stronger. [ 23 ] But there were epochs in the past when he would never have understood by himself that compassion and love belong to a very high stage of development. It was therefore necessary for spiritual Beings such as the Bodhisattvas to incarnate in human forms. Revelations of the power of compassion and love came to such Beings from the higher worlds and they were able to teach men how to act accordingly. What men have come to recognize to-day through their own powers as the lofty virtues of compassion and love—this had to be taught, through epoch after epoch, from heavenly heights. The Teacher of love and compassion in times when men themselves did not yet realize the nature of those virtues was the Bodhisattva who incarnated for the last time as Gautama Buddha. [ 24 ] Buddha was formerly the Bodhisattva, the Teacher of love and compassion. He was the Teacher throughout the epochs just referred to, when men still possessed a certain natural clairvoyance. As Bodhisattva he incarnated in bodies endowed with powers of clairvoyance. Then, when he became Buddha and looked back into these previous incarnations, he could describe the experiences of his inmost soul when it gazed into the depths of existence hidden behind sense-phenomena. He possessed this faculty in previous embodiments and was born with it into the family of Sakya from which his father, Suddhodana, descended. When Gautama was born he was still a Bodhisattva, that is to say he came at the stage of development reached in his previous incarnations. He who is usually called the ‘Buddha’ was born to his father Suddhodana and his mother Mayadevi as a Bodhisattva and possessed the faculty of clairvoyance in a high degree even as a child. He was always able to gaze into the depths of existence. [ 25 ] Let us realize that in the course of human evolution this capacity to gaze into the depths of existence has assumed very definite forms. It was the mission of humanity in earthly evolution to allow the old, dim clairvoyance gradually to die away; vestiges that persisted did not, therefore, retain the best elements of that ancient faculty. The best elements were the first to be lost. What remained was often a lower form of vision of the astral world, a vision of those demonic forces which drag man's instincts and passions to a lower level. Through Initiation we can look into the spiritual world and perceive forces and beings that are connected with the finest thoughts and sentiments of men, but we also perceive the spiritual powers behind unbridled passions, sensuality, consuming egoism. The vestiges of clairvoyance in the majority of human beings—it was different, of course, in the Initiates—led to vision of these wild, demonic powers behind the lower human passions. Whoever is able to see into the spiritual world can of course perceive all this himself; true vision depends upon the development of human faculties. But the one vision cannot be attained without the other. [ 26 ] As a Bodhisattva the Buddha had been obliged to incarnate in a body constituted as other human bodies were at that time. The body in which he incarnated provided him with the power to look deeply into the astral substrata of existence and even as a child he was able to perceive all the astral forces underlying the unbridled passions of men, their consuming lusts and sensuality. He had been protected from witnessing physical depravity in the outer world, with its accompanying sufferings and sorrows. Confined to his father's palace, shielded from every unpleasant experience, he was indulged and pampered in a way considered fitting for his rank. But this seclusion only enhanced his power of vision, and while he was carefully protected and everything indicative of pain and sickness hidden from him, his eyes of spirit were able to gaze at the astral pictures hovering around him of all the wild, degrading passions of men. Whoever can read the external biography of Buddha with genuine esoteric insight will surmise this. It must be emphasized that in exoteric accounts there is often a great deal that cannot be understood without knowledge of the esoteric foundations—and this applies very particularly to the life of Buddha. [ 27 ] It must seem strange to Orientalists and others who study the life of Buddha to read that he was surrounded in the palace by ‘forty thousand dancing-girls and eighty-four thousand women’. That statement is to be found in books sold to-day for a few shillings and the writers are obviously not particularly astonished at the existence of such a harem! What is the explanation? It is not realized that this points to the intensity of the experiences that arose in Buddha through his astral visions. Guarded from childhood against all knowledge of sorrow and suffering in the world of physical humanity, he perceived everything as spiritual forces in the spiritual world. He saw all this because he was born into a body such as could be produced at that time; but from the outset he was proof against the delusive pictures around him, having in his previous incarnations risen to the height of a Bodhisattva. Because in this incarnation he was living as the Bodhisattva he felt impelled to go out into the world in order to see the things indicated by the pictures appearing in the astral world around him in the palace. Every picture kindled within him an urge to go out and see the world, to leave his prison. That was the impelling urge in his soul, for as Bodhisattva there was in him the lofty spiritual power connected with the mission of imparting to mankind the teaching of compassion and love, with all its implications. Hence it was necessary for him to become acquainted with humanity in the world in which man can assimilate this teaching through moral insight. Buddha was to acquire knowledge of the life of humanity in the physical world. From Bodhisattva he was to become Buddha—as a man among men. The only possibility of achieving this was to abandon all the faculties that had remained to him from his former incarnations and to turn outwards to the physical plane in order to live there among men as a model, an ideal, an example to humanity of the development of these qualities. [ 28 ] Naturally, many intermediate stages are necessary before an advance from the stage of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha can be accomplished in this sense. Such an advance does not take place from one day to the next. Buddha felt impelled to leave the palace. The story is that on one occasion he escaped from his royal prison and came across an aged man. Hitherto he had been surrounded only by the spectacle of exuberant youth, in order to induce him to believe that nothing else existed. Now, in the old man, he encountered the phenomenon of advanced age on the physical plane. Then he came across a sick man; then he saw a corpse—the manifestation of death on the physical plane. All this came before him. [ 29 ] The legend—here once again truer than any external account—goes on to relate something very indicative of Buddha's essential nature: that when he left the palace, the horse by which he was drawn was so saddened by his decision to forsake everything that had surrounded him since his birth that it died of grief and was transported as a spiritual being into the spiritual world.2—A profound truth is expressed here. It would lead too far for me to explain why a horse is taken as a symbol for a spiritual power of man. I will only remind you of Plato, who speaks of a horse led by a bridle when he is using a symbol for certain human capacities that are still bestowed from above and have not been developed by man from his own inmost self. When Buddha departed from the palace he relinquished these faculties, left them in the spiritual world whence they had always guided him. This is indicated in the picture of the horse which dies of grief and is transported into the spiritual world. [ 30 ] But it was only gradually that Buddha could attain the rank he was destined to reach in his final incarnation on the Earth. He had first to learn on the physical plane everything that as Bodhisattva he had known only through spiritual vision. To begin with he encountered two teachers, the one an exponent of the ancient Indian world-conception known as the Sankhya philosophy, the other an exponent of the Yoga philosophy. Buddha steeped himself in what they expounded to him. No matter how exalted a being may be, he has to become acquainted with the external achievements of humanity and although a Bodhisattva may learn more quickly, he must learn none the less. If the Bodhisattva who lived six hundred years before our era were born to-day, he would still, like a child at school, first have to learn about happenings on Earth while he was still in spiritual heights. It was essential that Buddha too, should have knowledge of what had been accomplished since his previous incarnation. [ 31 ] He learnt the principles of the Sankhya philosophy from the one teacher and of the Yoga philosophy from the other, thereby acquiring a certain insight into world-conceptions which solved the riddles of life for many in those days, and into their effect upon the souls of men. [ 32 ] In the Sankhya philosophy he was able to assimilate an intricate system of logical thought, but the more he familiarized himself with it, the less did it satisfy him, until finally it seemed to him to be utterly devoid of life. He realized that he must seek elsewhere than in the traditional Sankhya philosophy for the sources of what it was his task to achieve in this incarnation. [ 33 ] The second system was the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali, which sought to establish connection with the Divine through certain processes in the life of the soul. Buddha devoted deep study to the Yoga philosophy as well; he assimilated it, made it part of his very being. But it too left him unsatisfied, for he perceived that it was something that had simply been handed down from ancient time. Human beings were meant, however, to acquire different faculties, to achieve moral development themselves. Having put the Yoga philosophy to the test in his own soul, Buddha realized that it could not satisfy the needs of his mission. [ 34 ] He then came into the neighbourhood of five ascetics who had striven to approach the mysteries of existence by the path of severest self-discipline, mortification and privation. Having tested this path too, Buddha was again obliged to admit that it would not satisfy the needs of his mission at that time. For a certain period he underwent all the privations and mortifications practised by the monks. He starved as they did, in order to eliminate greed and thereby evoke deeper forces which come into action when the body is weakened and then, rising up from the depths of the bodily nature, can lead a man rapidly into the spiritual world. But the stage of development he had reached enabled Buddha to perceive the futility of this mortification, fasting and starvation. Because he was a Bodhisattva, his development in previous incarnations had enabled him to bring the physical body to the highest pitch of perfection possible in that age. Hence he could experience what any man must experience when he takes this particular path into the spiritual world. [ 35 ] Whoever pursues the Sankhya or Yoga philosophy to a certain point without having developed in himself what Buddha had previously acquired, whoever aspires to scale the pure heights of Divine Spirit through logical thinking without having first gained the requisite moral strength, will be subjected to temptation by the demon Mara. This ordeal was undergone by Buddha as a test. At this point the human being is beset by all the devils of pride, vanity and ambition, as was Buddha when Mara stood before him. But having previously reached the lofty stage of Bodhisattva, he recognized the demon and was proof against him. Buddha could say to himself: If men continue to develop along the old path, without the new impulse contained in the teaching of compassion and love, they are bound, not being Bodhisattvas, to fall prey to the demon Mara, who pours all the forces of pride and vanity into their souls. This was what Buddha experienced when he had worked through the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies, following them to their final conclusions. [ 36 ] While he was with the monks, however, he had had an experience in which the demon assumed a different form, one in which he arrays before the human being an abundance of external, physical possessions—‘the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them’—in order to divert him from the spiritual world. Buddha found that this temptation comes precisely on the path of mortification, for the demon Mara approached him, saying: ‘Be not misled into abandoning everything that was yours as a king's son; return to the royal palace!’ Another man would have yielded to what was then presented to him, but Buddha's development was such that he could see through the tempter and his aim, could perceive what would befall humanity if men lived on as hitherto and chose the path of hunger and mortification as the only means of ascent into the spiritual world. Being himself proof against this temptation he could disclose to men the great danger that would threaten them if they chose to penetrate into the spiritual world simply by means of fasting and external measures of the kind, without the foundation of an active moral sense. [ 37 ] Thus while still a Bodhisattva, Buddha had advanced to those two boundary-points in development which a man who is not a Bodhisattva had better avoid altogether. Translating this into words of ordinary parlance, we may say: ‘The highest knowledge is full of glory and of beauty. But see that you approach this knowledge with a clean heart, noble purpose and purified soul—otherwise the devil of pride, vanity and ambition will seize you!’ The second teaching is this: ‘Strive not to enter the spiritual world by any external path, through mortification or fasting, until you have purified your moral sense—otherwise the tempter will approach you from the other side!’—These are the two teachings whose light shines from Buddha into our own age. While still a Bodhisattva he revealed the essential purpose of his mission—which was to impart the moral sense to humanity in an age when men were not yet capable of unfolding it out of their own hearts. Thus when he realized the dangers of asceticism for mankind he left the five monks and went to a place where, by an intense deepening of those faculties of human nature which can be developed without the old clairvoyance, without any capacity inherited from earlier times, he achieved the highest perfection that it will ever be possible for mankind to achieve by means of these faculties. [ 38 ] In the twenty-ninth year of his life, after having abandoned the path of asceticism, there dawned upon Buddha during his seven days of meditation under the ‘Bodhi-tree’ the great Truths that can flash up in a man when, in deep contemplation, he strives to discover what his own faculties can impart to him. There dawned upon Buddha the great teachings he then proclaimed as the Four Truths and the doctrine of compassion and love presented as the Eightfold Path. We shall be considering these teachings of Buddha later on. At the moment it will be sufficient to say that they are a kind of portrayal of the moral sense and of the purest doctrine of compassion and love. They arose when, under the ‘Bodhi-tree’, the Bodhisattva of India became Buddha. The teaching of compassion and love came into existence then for the first time in the history of mankind in the form of human faculties which man has since been able to develop from his own very self. That is the essential point. Therefore shortly before his death Buddha said to his disciples: ‘Grieve not that the Master is departing. I am leaving with you the Law of Wisdom and the Law of Discipline. For the future they will serve as substitutes for the Master.’ These words mean simply: Hitherto the Bodhisattva has taught you what is expressed in the Law; now, having fulfilled his incarnation on Earth, he may withdraw. For men will absorb into their own hearts the teaching of the Bodhisattva and from their own hearts will be able to develop this teaching as the religion of compassion and love. That was what came to pass in India when, after seven days of inner contemplation, the Bodhisattva became Buddha; and that was what he taught in diverse forms to the pupils who were around him. The actual forms in which he gave his teaching will still have to be considered. [ 39 ] It was necessary for us to-day to look back to what happened six hundred years before our era because we shall neither understand the path of Christianity nor what is indicated about that path, above all by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, unless we follow evolution backwards from the events in Palestine to the Sermon at Benares. Since Buddha attained that rank there was no need for him to return to the Earth; since then he has been a spiritual Being, living in the spiritual world and participating in everything that has transpired on Earth. When the greatest of all happenings on the Earth was about to come to pass, there appeared to the shepherds in the fields a Being from spiritual heights who made the proclamation recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke. Then, together with the Angel, there suddenly appeared a ‘heavenly host’. The ‘heavenly host’ was the picture of the glorified Buddha, seen by the shepherds in vision; he was the Bodhisattva of ancient times, the Being in his spiritual form who for thousands and thousands of years had brought to men the message of compassion and love. Now, after his last incarnation on the Earth, he soared in spiritual heights and appeared to the shepherds together with the Angel who had announced to them the Event of Palestine. [ 41 ] These are the findings of spiritual investigation. It was the Bodhisattva of old who now, in the glory of Buddhahood, appeared to the shepherds. From the Akashic Chronicle we learn that in Palestine, in the ‘City of David’, a child was born to parents descended from the priestly line of the House of David. This child—I say it with emphasis—born of parents of whom the father at any rate was descended from the priestly line of the House of David, was to be shone upon from the very day of birth by the power radiating from Buddha in the spiritual world. [ 42 ] We look with the shepherds into the manger where ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, as he is usually called, was born, and see the radiance above the little child; we know that in this picture is expressed the power of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha—the power that had formerly streamed to men and, working now upon humanity from the spiritual world, accomplished its greatest deed by shedding its lustre upon the child born at Bethlehem. [ 42 ] When the Individuality whose power now rayed down from spiritual heights upon the child of parents belonging to David's line was born in India long ago—when the Buddha to be was born as Bodhisattva—the whole momentous significance of the events described to-day was revealed to a sage living at that time, and what he beheld in the spiritual world caused that sage—Asita was his name—to go to the royal palace to look for the little Bodhisattva-child. When he saw the babe he foretold his mighty mission as Buddha, predicting, to the father's dismay, that the child would not rule over his kingdom, but would become a Buddha. Then Asita began to weep, and when asked whether misfortune threatened the child, he answered: ‘No, I am weeping because I am so old that I shall not live to see the day when this Saviour, the Bodhisattva, will walk the Earth as Buddha!’ Asita did not live to see the Bodhisattva become Buddha and there was good reason for his grief at that time. But the same Asita who had seen the Bodhisattva as a babe in the palace of King Suddhodana, was born again as the personality who, in the Gospel of St. Luke, is referred to as Simeon in the scene of the presentation in the temple. We are told that Simeon was inspired by the Spirit to go into the temple where the child was brought to him (Luke II, 25–32). Simeon was the same being who, as Asita, had wept because in that incarnation he would not be able to see the Bodhisattva attaining Buddhahood. But it was granted to him to witness the further stage in the development of this Individuality, and having ‘the Holy Spirit upon him’ he was able to perceive, at the presentation in the temple, the radiance of the glorified Bodhisattva above the head of the Jesus-child of the House of David. Then he could say to himself: ‘Now you need no longer grieve, for what you did not live to see at that earlier time, you now behold: the glory of the Saviour shining above this babe. Lord, now let thy servant die in peace!’
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Buddhistic Conceptions in St. Luke
17 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: Buddhistic Conceptions in St. Luke
17 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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Whoever turns to the Gospel of St. Luke will, to begin with, only be able to feel dimly something of what it contains; but an inkling will then dawn on him that whole worlds, vast spiritual worlds, are revealed by this Gospel. After what was said in the last lecture, this will be obvious to us, for as we heard, spiritual research shows how the Buddhistic world-conception, with everything it was able to give to mankind, flowed into the Gospel of St. Luke. It may truly be said that Buddhism radiates from this Gospel, but in a special form, comprehensible to the simplest and most unsophisticated mind. As could be gathered from the last lecture and will become particularly clear to-day, to understand Buddhism as presented to the world in the teachings of the great Buddha demands the application of lofty conceptions and an ascent to the pure, ethereal heights of the Spirit; a very great deal of preparation is required to grasp the essence of Buddhism. Its spiritual substance is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke in a form that can influence everyone who recognizes concepts and ideas that are essential for humanity. This will be readily understood when we get to the root of the mystery underlying the Gospel of St. Luke. Not only are the spiritual attainments of Buddhism presented to us through this Gospel; they come before us in an even nobler form, as though raised to a level higher than when they were a gift to humanity in India some six hundred years before our era. In the lecture yesterday we spoke of Buddhism as the purest teaching of compassion and love; from the place in the world where Buddha worked a gospel of love and compassion streamed into the whole spiritual evolution of the Earth. The gospel of love and compassion lives in the true Buddhist when his own heart feels the suffering confronting him in the outer world from all living creatures. There we encounter Buddhistic love and compassion in the fullest sense of the words; but from the Gospel of St. Luke there streams to us something that is more than this all-embracing love and compassion. It might be described as the translation of love and compassion into deed. Compassion in the highest sense of the word is the ideal of the Buddhist; the aim of one who lives according to the message of the Gospel of St. Luke is to unfold love that acts. The true Buddhist can himself share in the sufferings of the sick; from the Gospel of St. Luke comes the call to take active steps to do whatever is possible to bring about healing. Buddhism helps us to understand everything that stirs the human soul; the Gospel of St. Luke calls upon us to abstain from passing judgment, to do more than is done to us, to give more than we receive! Although in this Gospel there is the purest, most genuine Buddhism, love translated into deed must be regarded as a progression, a sublimation, of Buddhism. This aspect of Christianity—Buddhism raised to a higher level—could be truly described only by one possessed of the heart and disposition of the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. It was eminently possible for him to portray Christ Jesus as the Healer of body and soul because having himself worked as a physician he was able to write in the way that appealed so deeply to the hearts of men. That he recorded what he had to say about Christ Jesus from the standpoint of a physician will become more and more apparent as we penetrate into the depths of the Gospel. But something else strikes us when we consider what an impression this Gospel can make upon even the most childlike natures. The lofty teachings of Buddhism, to understand which mature intelligence is required, appear to us in the Gospel of St. Luke as though rejuvenated, as though born anew from a fountain of youth. Buddhism is a fruit on the tree of humanity, and when we find it again in this Gospel it seems to be like a rejuvenation of what it had previously been. It is only possible to understand this rejuvenation by paying close attention to the great Buddha's teachings themselves and discerning with spiritual eyes the powers working in Buddha's soul. In the first place it must be remembered that the Buddha had been a Bodhisattva, that is to say, a very lofty Being able to gaze deeply into the mysteries of existence. As a Bodhisattva, the Buddha had participated in the evolution of humanity throughout the ages. When in the epoch following Atlantis the first post-Atlantean civilization was established and promoted, Buddha was already present as Bodhisattva and, acting as an intermediary, conveyed to man from the spiritual worlds the teachings indicated in the lecture yesterday. He had been present in Atlantean and even in Lemurian times. And because he had reached such a high stage of development, he was also able, during the twenty-nine years of his final existence as Bodhisattva, from his birth to the moment when he became Buddha, to recollect stage by stage all the communities in which he had lived before incarnating for the last time in India. He could look back upon his participation in the labours of humanity, upon his existence in the divine-spiritual worlds in order that he might bring down from there what it was his mission to impart to mankind. It was indicated yesterday that even an Individuality of this lofty rank must live through again, briefly at any rate, what he has already learnt. Thus Buddha describes how while still a Bodhisattva he gradually rose to higher stages of consciousness, how his spiritual vision became ever more perfect and his enlightenment complete. We are told how he described to his disciples the path his soul had traversed and how he was able by degrees to recollect his experiences in the past. He spoke to them somewhat as follows. ‘There was a time, O ye monks, when an all-pervading light appeared to me from the spiritual world, but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it—neither forms, nor pictures: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to see not only the light, but single pictures, single forms, within the light; but I could not distinguish what these forms and pictures denoted: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to realize that spiritual beings were expressing themselves in these forms and pictures; but again I could not distinguish to what kingdoms of the spiritual world these beings belonged: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I learnt to know to which of the various kingdoms of the spiritual world these several beings belonged; but I could not yet distinguish through what actions they had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, nor what was their condition of soul: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I could discern through what actions these spiritual beings had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, and what was their condition of soul; but I could not yet distinguish with which particular spiritual beings I myself had lived in former times, nor how I was related to them: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I was able to know that I was together with certain beings in particular epochs and was related to them in this way or in that: I knew what my previous lives had been. Now my enlightenment was pure!’ In this way Buddha indicated to his disciples how he had gradually worked his way to knowledge which, although he had already attained it in an earlier epoch, had nevertheless to be freshly acquired in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each successive incarnation. In Buddha's case this knowledge had necessarily to be in a form in keeping with his complete descent into a physical human body. If we enter into these things with the right feeling we shall get an inkling of the greatness and significance of the Individuality who incarnated at that time in the King's son of the family of Sakya. Buddha knew that the world he himself could again experience and behold would be inaccessible to men's ordinary faculty of vision in the immediate present and future. Only ‘Initiates’—and Buddha himself was an Initiate—could gaze into the spiritual world; for normal humanity this was no longer possible. Inherited remains of the old clairvoyance had become increasingly rare. But Buddha had not come to speak to men only of what Initiates had to say; his primary mission was to convey to them knowledge of the forces that must flow out of the human soul itself. Hence he could not speak only of the fruits of his own enlightenment, but he said to himself: ‘I must speak to men of what they can attain through the higher development of their own inner nature and of the faculties belonging to this epoch. In the course of Earth evolution men will gradually come to recognize the content of Buddha's teaching as something that their own reason, their own soul, tells them. But long, long ages will have to pass before all men are mature enough to produce out of their own souls what Buddha was the first to bring to expression in the form of pure knowledge. For to develop certain faculties in later ages is not the same as to bring them forth for the first time from the depths of the human soul. Let us take another example. To-day, even the young are able to assimiliate the principles of logic and unfold logical thinking. Logical thinking is now one of the general faculties possessed by man and developed from his own inner nature. But it was in Aristotle, the great Greek thinker, that this faculty first arose from a human soul. There is a difference between bringing forth something for the first time from the soul and bringing it forth after it has already been developing for a period in humanity. Buddha's message to men was among the very greatest of teachings and will remain so for long, long ages. Hence the soul of a Bodhisattva, the soul of one enlightened to such a supreme degree, was needed in order that this teaching should for the first time become a living power in a human being. Only the highest degree of enlightenment could enable the soul to give birth to what was to become a universal endowment of mankind—namely, the lofty doctrine of compassion and love. Buddha's message had to be presented in words familiar to the humanity of that time, especially to the people of his homeland. Reference has already been made to the fact that at the time of Buddha the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies were being taught in India. From them were derived the terminologies and concepts in use at the time. Anyone who brought a new message had necessarily to use current parlance, and Buddha too clothed what was living within him in concepts familiar to his contemporaries. True, he re-cast these concepts into completely new forms but he was obliged to use them. The principle of all evolution must be that the future is based on the past. And so Buddha clothed his sublime wisdom in expressions customary in the Indian teachings of that time. We must now try to picture what Buddha experienced during the seven-day period of his ‘Enlightenment’ under the Bodhi-tree. This teaching was to become the deepest, most intimate concern of mankind. Let us therefore try to conceive, even if with thoughts only approximately adequate, what profound experiences were undergone by Buddha under the Bodhi-tree and then came to expression in his soul. He might have said that there were times in the ancient past when many human beings were dimly clairvoyant and that in an even more distant past this was the case with everyone. What does it mean—to be ‘dimly clairvoyant’, or ‘clairvoyant’? To be clairvoyant means to be able to use the organs of the etheric body. When a man is able to use the organs of his astral body only, he can, it is true, inwardly feel and experience profound mysteries, but there can be no actual vision. Clairvoyance cannot arise until what is experienced in the astral body makes its ‘impress’ in the etheric body. Even the old, dim clairvoyance originated from the fact that in the etheric body, which had not yet passed completely into the physical body, there were organs which it was still possible for ancient humanity to use. What, therefore, was it that men lost in the course of time? They lost the capacity to use the organs of the etheric body! They were obliged to make use of the external organs of the physical body only, experiencing in the astral body, in the form of thoughts, feelings and mental pictures, what the physical body transmitted. All this passed through the soul of the great Buddha as the expression of what he experienced. He said to himself: ‘Men have lost the capacity to use the organs of their etheric bodies. They experience in their astral bodies what they learn from the outer world through the instrumentality of their physical bodies.’ Buddha now concerned himself with this significant question: ‘When the eye perceives the colour red, when the ear hears a sound, a tone, when the sense of taste has received some impression, under normal conditions these impressions become concepts and ideas, are inwardly experienced in the astral body. If they were experienced in this way alone, they could not, in normal circumstances, be accompanied by pain and suffering. Were man simply to abandon himself to the impressions of the outer world as the latter with its light, colours, sounds, and so forth, affects his senses, he would pass through the world without experiencing pain and suffering from the impressions made upon him. Only under certain conditions can pain and suffering be experienced by man.’ Hence the great Buddha sought to discover the conditions under which man experiences pain, suffering, cares and afflictions. When and why do the impressions of the outer world become fraught with suffering? Then he said to himself: Looking back into ancient times, it is revealed that in men's earlier incarnations on the Earth certain beings worked into their astral bodies from two sides. In the course of incarnations through the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis, the Luciferic beings penetrated into human nature, and their influences took actual effect in the human astral body. Then, from the Atlantean epoch onwards, man was also worked upon by beings under the leadership of Ahriman. Thus in the course of his earlier incarnations, man was subjected to the influences of both the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Had these beings not worked upon him, he could have acquired neither freedom nor the capacity to distinguish between good and evil, nor free will. From a higher point of view, therefore, it is fortunate that these influences were exercised upon him, although it is true that in a certain respect they led him from divine-spiritual heights more deeply into material existence than he would otherwise have descended. The great Buddha could therefore say that man bears within himself influences due to the invasion of Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. These influences have remained with him from earlier incarnations. When, with his old clairvoyance, man was still able to gaze into the spiritual world, he perceived the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman and could clearly distinguish them. He could say: This particular influence comes from Lucifer, this other from Ahriman. And inasmuch as with his vision of the astral world he perceived the harmful influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, he could reckon with and protect himself from them. He knew too, how he had come into contact with these Beings. There was a time—so said Buddha—when men knew whence came the influences they had borne within themselves from incarnation to incarnation since bygone ages. But with the loss of the old clairvoyance this knowledge was also lost; man is now ignorant of the influences that have worked upon his soul through the series of incarnations. The earlier clairvoyant knowledge has been replaced by ignorance. Darkness now envelops man; he cannot perceive whence come these influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, but they are there within him! He has within him something of which he knows nothing. It would be folly to deny the reality and effectiveness of something that exists, even though people are ignorant of it. The influences that have penetrated into man from incarnation to incarnation are working in him. They are there and they work through his whole life—only he is unaware of them! What effect have these influences in man? Although he cannot actually recognize them for what they are, he feels them; there is a power within him that is the expression of what has continued from incarnation to incarnation and has entered into his present form of existence. These forces, the nature of which man cannot recognize, are represented by his desire for external life, for experience in the world, by his thirst and craving for life. Thus the ancient Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences work within man as the thirst, the craving for existence. This ‘thirst for existence’ continues from incarnation to incarnation. This, in effect, is what the great Buddha said. But to his intimate pupils he gave more detailed explanations. How he presented what he thus felt can be understood only if there has been a certain preparation through Anthroposophy. We know that when a man dies his astral body and his Ego leave the physical and etheric bodies. Then he has before him, for a certain time, the great memory-tableau of his last life in the form of a vast picture. The main part of his etheric body is then cast off as a second corpse and something like an extract or essence of this etheric body remains; he bears this extract with him through the periods of Kamaloka and Devachan and brings it back again into his next incarnation. While he is in Kamaloka there is inscribed into this life-extract everything he has experienced through his deeds, everything that has been incurred in the way of human Karma and for which he has to make compensation. All this unites with the extract of the etheric body which passes on from one incarnation to another and man brings it with him when he again comes into existence through birth. The term in Oriental literature for what we call ‘etheric body’ is ‘Linga Sharira’. Thus it is an extract of Linga Sharira that man takes with him from incarnation to incarnation. Buddha was able to say: At birth, the human being brings with him, in his Linga Sharira, everything it contains from his former incarnations; it is inscribed there everything of which man, in the present epoch, knows nothing and over which spreads the darkness of ignorance, although it asserts itself as the ‘thirst for existence’, the ‘craving for life’. In what is called the ‘craving for life’, Buddha saw everything that comes from previous incarnations and drives man to long avidly for enjoyment in the world, so that he does not merely move though the world of colours, tones and other impressions, but yearns for this world. This force exists in man from previous incarnations. Buddha's pupils called it ‘Samskara’. Buddha spoke to his intimate pupils to the following effect.—What is characteristic of man is his ignorance, his ‘non-perception’ of something very significant that is in him. Because of this ignorance, this non-perception, everything that confronts man from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings and to which he might otherwise adopt an effective attitude, is transformed into the ‘thirst for existence’, into slumbering forces which rumble darkly within him from previous incarnations. Man's present thinking has developed from ‘Samskara’ and this is why, in the present cycle of human evolution, nobody is able, without further effort, to think objectively. Mark well the fine distinction made clear by Buddha to his pupils: the distinction between objective thinking which has nothing but the ‘object’ in view, and thinking influenced by the forces arising from the Linga Sharira. Consider how you acquire your ‘opinions’ about things; ask yourselves how much you acquire from these things because they please you and how much because you observe them objectively. Everything acquired as an apparent truth, not as the result of objective thinking, but because old inclinations have been brought from previous incarnations—all this, according to Buddha, forms an ‘inner organ of thought’. This organ of thought comprises the sum-total of what a man thinks because certain experiences in former incarnations remain in his Linga Sharira as a residue. Buddha saw in the inner being of man a kind of inner organ of thought formed from Samskara, and he said: ‘It is this thought-substance that forms in man what is called his ‘present individuality’—in Buddhism, ‘Name and Form’, or ‘Kamarupa’. ‘Ahamkara’ is the term used in another philosophy. Buddha spoke to his pupils somewhat as follows. In primeval times, when men were still clairvoyant and beheld the world lying behind physical existence, they all, in a certain sense, saw the same, for the objective world is the same for everyone. But when the darkness of ignorance spread over the world, each man brought with him individual capacities which distinguished him from his fellows. This made him into a being best described as having a particular form of soul. Each human being had a name which distinguished him from another—each had an ‘Ahamkara’. What is thus created in man's inner nature under the influence of what he has brought with him from former incarnations and accounts for his ‘Name and Form’, his individuality—this builds in him, from within outwards, Manas and the five sense-organs, the so-called ‘six organs’. Note well that Buddha did not say: ‘The eye is merely formed from within outwards’; but he said: ‘Something that was in Linga Sharira and has been brought over from previous stages of existence is membered into the eye.’ Hence the eye does not see with pure, unclouded vision; it would look into the world of outer existence quite differently if it were not inwardly permeated with the residue of earlier stages of existence. Hence the ear does not hear with full clarity but everything is dimmed by this residue. The result is that there is mingled into all things the desire to see this or that, to hear this or that, to taste or perceive in one way or another. Into everything man encounters in the present cycle of existence there is insinuated what has remained from earlier incarnations as ‘desire’. If this element of desire were absent—so said Buddha—man would look out into the world as a divine being; he would let the world work upon him and no longer desire anything more than is granted to him, nor wish his knowledge to exceed what was bestowed upon him by the divine Powers; he would make no distinction between himself and the outer world, but would feel himself membered into it. He feels himself separated from the rest of the world only because he craves for more and different enjoyment than the world voluntarily offers him. This leads to the consciousness that he is different from the world. If he were satisfied with what is in the world, he would not distinguish himself from it; he would feel his own existence continuing in the outer world. He would never experience what is called ‘contact’ with the outer world, for, not being separate from it, he could not come into ‘contact’ with it. The forming of the ‘six organs’ was responsible for the gradual establishment of ‘contact with the outer world’; contact gave rise to feeling and feeling to the urge to cling to the outer world. But it is because man tries to cling to the outer world that pain, suffering, cares and afflictions arise. This is what Buddha taught his pupils regarding the ‘inner man’ as the cause of pain, suffering, cares and afflictions. It was a delicately woven, sublime theory—but a theory that sprang directly from life, for an ‘Enlightened One’ had experienced it as a profound truth concerning the humanity of his time. Having guided humanity as Bodhisattva for thousands and thousands of years in accordance with the principles of love and compassion, there dawned in him when he became Buddha, knowledge of the true nature and the causes of suffering. He was able to know why man suffers, and explained this to his intimate disciples. And when his development was so advanced that he could experience the very essence and meaning of human existence in the present cycle of evolution, he summarized it all in the famous sermon at Benares with which he inaugurated his work as Buddha. There he presented in a popular form what he had previously communicated to his disciples in a more intimate way. He spoke somewhat as follows.—Whoever knows the causes of human existence, realizes that life, as it is, must be fraught with suffering. The first teaching I have to give you concerns suffering in the world. The second teaching concerns the causes of suffering. Wherein do these causes lie? They lie in the fact that the thirst for existence insinuates itself into man from what has remained in him from previous incarnations. Thirst for existence is the cause of suffering. The third teaching concerns the question: How is suffering eliminated from the world? By eliminating its cause; by extinguishing the thirst for existence proceeding from ignorance! Men have lost their former clairvoyant knowledge, have become ignorant, and it is this ignorance that conceals the spiritual world from them. Ignorance is to blame for the thirst for existence and this in turn is the cause of suffering and pain, cares and afflictions. Thirst for existence must disappear from the world if suffering is to disappear. The old knowledge has passed away from the world; men can no longer use the organs of the etheric body. But a new knowledge is now possible, the knowledge acquired when man immerses himself completely in what his astral body, thanks to its deepest forces, can give him, and with the help of what his outer sense-organs enable him to observe in the external physical world. What is thus kindled in the deepest forces of the astral body and is developed with the co-operation of the physical body—although not actually derived from it—this alone can help man to begin with, and give him knowledge; for this knowledge is at first bestowed upon him as a gift. It was to this effect that Buddha spoke in his great inaugural sermon. He knew that he must transmit to humanity the kind of knowledge that is attainable through the highest development of the forces of the astral body. Hence he had to teach that through deep and penetrating understanding of the forces of the astral body, man acquires knowledge that is both appropriate and possible for him but is at the same time untouched by influences from earlier incarnations. Buddha wished to impart to men a kind of knowledge that has nothing to do with what slumbers in the darkness of ignorance within the human soul as Samskara. Such knowledge is acquired by waking to life all the forces contained in the astral body in one incarnation. ‘The cause of suffering in the world’—so said Buddha—‘is that something of which man knows nothing has remained behind from earlier incarnations. This legacy from earlier incarnations is the cause of man's ignorance concerning the world; it is the cause of his suffering and pain. But when he becomes conscious of the nature of the forces in his astral body, he can, if he so will, acquire a knowledge that has remained independent of all influences from earlier times—a knowledge that is his very own!’ This was the knowledge that the great Buddha wished to impart to men, and he did so in the form of what is known as the ‘Eightfold Path’. There he indicates the capacities and qualities which man must develop in order to attain, in the present cycle of human evolution, knowledge that is uninfluenced by the ever-recurring births. Thus by the power he had himself acquired, Buddha raised his soul to the heights attainable by means of the strongest forces of the astral body, and in the ‘Eightfold Path’ he showed humanity the way to a kind of knowledge uninfluenced by Samskara. He described the path as follows.— Man attains this kind of knowledge about the world when he acquires a right view of things, a view that has nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy or preference of any sort. He must strive as best he can to acquire the right view of each thing, purely according to what presents itself to him outwardly. That is the first principle: the right view of things. Secondly, man must become independent of what has remained from earlier incarnations; he must also endeavour to judge in accordance with his right view of a thing and not be swayed by any other influences. Thus right judgment is the second principle. The third is that he must strive to give true expression to what he desires to communicate to the world, having first acquired the right view and right judgment of it; not only his words but every manifestation of his being must express his own right view—that and that alone. This is right speech. The fourth principle is that man must strive to act, not according to his sympathies and antipathies, not according to the dark forces of Samskara within him, but in such a way that he lets his right view, right judgment and right speech become deed. This is right action. The fifth principle, enabling a man to liberate himself from what is within him, is that he should acquire the right vocation and station in the world. We may best understand what Buddha meant by this, if we remember how many people are dissatisfied with the tasks devolving upon them, believing that some other position would be more advantageous. But a man should be able to derive from the situation into which he is born or into which fate has placed him, the best that is possible, i.e. to acquire the right ‘occupation’ or ‘vocation’. Whoever finds no satisfaction in the situation in which he is placed, will not be able to derive from it the power to unfold right activity in the world. This is what Buddha called right vocation. The sixth principle is that a man should make increasing efforts to ensure that what he acquires through right views, right judgment and so forth, shall become habit in him. He is born into the world with certain habits. A child gives evidence of this or that inclination or habit. But man's endeavours should be directed, not towards retaining the habits, proceeding from Samskara but towards acquiring those that gradually become his own as the result of right views, right judgment, right speech, and so on. These are the right habits. The seventh principle is that a man should bring order into his life through not invariably forgetting yesterday when he has to act to-day. He would never accomplish anything if he had to learn his skills anew each time. He must strive to develop recollectedness, mindfulness, regarding everything in his life. He must always turn to account what he has already learnt, he must link the present with the past. Thus along the Eightfold Path man must acquire right mindfulness in the sense of Buddha's teaching. The eighth quality is acquired when, without partiality for one view or another and without being influenced by any element remaining in him from former incarnations, he surrenders himself with pure devotion to the things of the world, immerses himself in them and lets them alone speak to him. This is right contemplation. This is the Eightfold Path, of which Buddha said to his disciples that if followed it would gradually lead to the extinction of the thirst for existence with its attendant suffering, and impart to the soul something that brings liberation from elements enslaving it from past lives. We have now been able to grasp something of the spirit and origin of Buddhism. We know too what significance lies in the fact that the Bodhisattva of old became Buddha. The Bodhisattva had always allowed everything connected with his mission to flow into humanity. In very ancient times, before Buddha came into the world, men were not able to apply even their inner forces in such a way that they themselves could have developed the attributes of the Eightfold Path. Influences flowing from the spiritual world were necessary to make this possible, and it was the Bodhisattva of old who enabled these influences to stream down upon mankind. It was therefore an event of unique significance when this Bodhisattva became Buddha and now gave forth in the form of teaching what in earlier times he had caused to flow down upon men from above. He had now brought into the world a physical body able to unfold out of itself, forces that formerly could flow down from higher realms only. The first body of this kind was brought into the world by Gautama Buddha. Everything he had formerly caused to flow down from above became reality in the physical world at that time. It is a happening of great and far-reaching importance for the whole of Earth evolution when forces that have streamed down upon humanity from epoch to epoch are present one day in the bodily nature of a human being on Earth. A power that can pass over into all men is then engendered. In the body of Gautama Buddha lie the causes enabling men in all ages to develop in their own being the powers of the Eightfold Path. Buddha's existence ensured for men the possibility of right thinking! And whatever comes to pass in the future in this respect, until the principles of the Eightfold Path become reality in the whole of mankind, will all be thanks to that existence. What Buddha bore within himself he surrendered to men for their spiritual nourishment. Generally speaking, no science to-day perceives these significant facts in the evolution of humanity, but they are often presented in simple fairy-tales and legends. I have emphasized more than once that fairy-tales and legends are often wiser and more truly ‘scientific’ than our objective science itself. In its depths the human soul has always sensed a certain truth connected with the nature of a Being such as a Bodhisattva: that, to begin with, something streams down from above, then becomes by degrees a possession of the soul and thereafter rays back again into the cosmos from the soul itself. Men who were able to feel the significance of this either dimly or clearly said to themselves: like the rays of the sun from the heavens, so did the Bodhisattva once ray down upon the Earth the forces of the doctrine of compassion and love, the forces developed through the principles of the Eightfold Path. But then the Bodhisattva descended into a human body and surrendered to men the power that was once his own possession. This power now lives in humanity and streams back into the cosmos as the rays of the sun are reflected back in the moon's light. This was felt to be of special significance in regions where it was customary to express such a truth in the form of a fairy-tale or legend. Thus the following remarkable legend was narrated in the regions where the Bodhisattva appeared. Once upon a time the Buddha lived as a hare. It was an age when other creatures of many different species were looking for food, but it had all been consumed. The plant food which the hare itself could eat was not suitable for carnivorous creatures. The hare, who was in reality the Buddha, saw a Brahman passing by and resolved to sacrifice himself in order to provide food. At that moment the God appeared and saw the noble deed. A chasm opened and swallowed the hare. Then the God took a tincture and drew the picture of the hare on the moon. And since that time the picture of Buddha as the hare is to be seen on the face of the moon. In the West we do not speak of the ‘hare in the moon’ but of the ‘man in the moon’. A Kalmuck fairy-tale expresses this still more cogently. In the moon lives a hare; it came there because once upon a time the Buddha sacrificed himself and the Earth-Spirit drew the picture of the hare on the moon. This expresses the great truth of the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha and sacrificing the substance of his very being to mankind for nourishment, so that his forces now ray out into the world from the hearts of men. Of a Being such as the Bodhisattva who became Buddha, we said—and this is the teaching of all who know: When a Being passes through this stage he has had his last incarnation on the Earth, for his whole nature is contained within a human body. Such a Being never again incarnates in this sense. Hence when the Buddha became aware of the significance of his present existence, he could say: ‘This is my last incarnation; I shall not again incarnate on the Earth!’—It would however be erroneous to think that such a Being then withdraws altogether from Earth-existence. True, he does not enter directly into a physical body but he assumes another body—of an astral or etheric nature—and so continues to send his influences into the world. The way in which such a Being who has passed through the last incarnation belonging to his own destiny continues to work in the world, may be understood by thinking of the following facts. An ordinary human being, consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, can be permeated by such a Being. It is possible for a Being of this rank, who no longer descends into a physical body but still has an astral body, to be membered into the astral body of another human being. This man may well become a personality of importance, for the forces of a Being who has already passed through his last incarnation on the Earth are now working in him. Thus an astral Being unites with the astral nature of some individual on the Earth. Such a union may take place in a most complicated way. When the Buddha appeared to the shepherds in the picture of the ‘heavenly host’, he was not in a physical body but in an astral body. He had assumed a body in which he could still send his influences to the Earth. Thus in the case of a Being who has become a Buddha, we distinguish three bodies:
We can therefore say that the ‘Nirmanakaya’ of Buddha appeared to the shepherds in the picture of the angelic host. Buddha appeared in the radiance of his Nirmanakaya and revealed himself in this way to the shepherds. But he was to find further ways of working into the events in Palestine at this crucial point of time. To understand this we must briefly recall what is known to us from other lectures about the nature of man. Spiritual science speaks of several ‘births’. At what is called ‘physical birth’ the human being strips off, as it were, the maternal physical sheath; at the seventh year he strips off the etheric sheath which envelops him until the change of teeth just as the maternal physical sheath enveloped him until physical birth. At puberty—about the fourteenth or fifteenth year in the modern epoch—the human being strips off the astral sheath that is around him until then. It is not until the seventh year that the human etheric body is born outwardly as a free body; the astral body is born at puberty, when the outer astral sheath is cast off. Let us now consider what it is that is discarded at puberty. In Palestine and the neighbouring regions this point of time occurs normally at about the twelfth year—rather earlier than in lands farther to the West. In the ordinary way this protective astral sheath is cast off and given over to the outer astral world. In the case of the child who descended from the priestly line of the House of David, however, something different happened. At the age of twelve the astral sheath was cast off but did not dissolve in the universal astral world. Just as it was, as the protective astral sheath of the young boy, with all the vitalising forces that had streamed into it between the change of teeth and puberty, it now united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. The spiritual body that had once appeared to the shepherds as the radiant angelic host united with the astral sheath released from the twelve-year-old Jesus, united with all the forces through which the freshness of youth is maintained during the period between the second dentition and puberty. The Nirmanakaya which shone upon the Nathan Jesus-child from birth onwards united with the astral sheath detached from this child at puberty; it became one with this sheath and was thereby rejuvenated. Through this rejuvenation, what Buddha had formerly given to the world could be manifest again in the Jesus-child. Hence the boy was able to speak with all the simplicity of childhood about the lofty teachings of compassion and love to which we have referred to-day. When Jesus was found in the temple he was speaking in a way that astonished those around him, because he was enveloped by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, refreshed as from a fountain of youth by the boy's astral sheath. These are facts which can become known to the spiritual investigator and which the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke has indicated in the remarkable scene when a sudden change came over the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. We must grasp what it was that had happened and then we shall understand why the boy no longer spoke as he had formerly been wont to speak. It so happened that at this very time, King Kanisha of Tibet summoned a Synod in India and proclaimed ancient Buddhism to be the orthodox religion. But in the meantime Buddha himself had advanced! He had absorbed the forces of the protective astral sheath of the Jesus-child and was thereby able to speak in a new way to the hearts and souls of men. The Gospel of St. Luke contains Buddhism in a new form, as though springing from a fountain of youth; hence it expresses the religion of compassion and love in a form comprehensible to the simplest souls. We can read what the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke has woven into the text of his Gospel, but still more is contained in its depths. Only part of what appertains to the scene of Jesus in the temple could be described to-day and even greater depths of this mystery have still to be explained. Light will then be shed upon the earlier as well as upon the later years of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Two Jesus Children
18 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Two Jesus Children
18 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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The facts underlying the Gospels—particularly that of St. Luke—will become increasingly complicated as we proceed. I must therefore ask you to bear in mind, especially to-day, that as the lectures are given as a consecutive series, a single one, or even several, cannot be understood unless studied in connection with the rest. This applies particularly to the present lecture and the one to follow; so you must wait until tomorrow before asking how the various facts to be presented are connected with what has already been said on other occasions. In the last lecture we heard that the Nirmanakaya of Buddha manifested itself to the world at the moment when, according to the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, the proclamation was made to the shepherds. Buddhist conceptions that flowed into Christianity were thereby given to the world in a new form and were rejuvenated through the circumstance that the protective astral sheath of the Nathan Jesus-child—the sheath that is detached from the growing human being at puberty—was absorbed by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha and became one with it in the twelfth year of Jesus' life. From that moment onwards we have to do with a definite entity consisting of the Nirmanakaya (or spiritual body) of Buddha and the protective astral sheath that had been detached from the twelve-year-old Jesus-child. In ordinary life, when the protective astral sheath is cast off in the course of development and the astral body is actually born, the sheath dissolves into the universal astral world. In the case of an average person of our time, the astral sheath would not be suitable for incorporation in a higher Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. There was something very special about the astral sheath which was cast off at that time and through its union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha rejuvenated the whole of Buddhism. In other words, a unique Being must have been incarnated in the body of this Jesus-child—a Being from whom proceeded the forces that were absorbed by the astral sheath and contained the rejuvenating power indicated in the lecture yesterday. It must have been no ordinary human being but a very special Being who grew up in the Jesus-child from birth to the twelfth year and was able to infuse the rejuvenating forces into the discarded astral sheath. To form an idea of how a child could possibly work upon his sheaths in a way differing from the normal, the facts must be approached by means of a comparison. If we follow the life of the human being evolving under normal conditions from birth to later stages, to the twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth years, we can perceive how the various forces that are present at birth in rudimentary form gradually make their appearance. The child grows both physically and spiritually; the forces of soul develop by degrees. (How this takes place can be read in my book The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy.)1 Try to picture to yourselves how the forces of the mind and intellect develop in the child; how at the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first years certain powers not in operation before make their appearance or are forthcoming in greater strength. Try to imagine how this process takes place in the normal course of human life, and now suppose that we wish to make an experiment with life; we wish to make it possible for a young human being to develop in a way that is less normal and less in conformity with the customs of our present age. We wish to give him a special opportunity of grasping with a certain freshness, and not in the ordinary way, the material usually assimilated between the twelfth and eighteenth years, so that he does not absorb it as others do, but retains a kind of inventive power, continuing to work creatively upon it. Suppose we wish to make such a child into a specially creative human being. In that case we shall not allow him to grow up as other children normally do. I say expressly that this is a hypothetical experiment only and is not meant to be immediately put into practice. I speak of it by way of comparison only and do not recommend it as an ideal of education! Thus supposedly we wish to train a human being to develop an especially creative turn of mind, not only keeping his thinking very alert but continuing, even at a later age, to unfold inventive powers. To begin with, we should have to keep such a child from learning what other children learn directly after the ages of six or seven; the usual school-subjects taught to other children would have to be withheld from him. Until his tenth or eleventh year he would as far as possible be kept at play and be taught very little in the way of ordinary school-subjects, so that at the age of nine he would probably still be unable to add up figures and at the age of eight still hardly able to read. Then we should have to begin at the age of eight or nine with all that a child usually learns when he is six or seven years old. Under these conditions the faculties of the human being develop quite differently and the soul makes something altogether different of what is imparted to it. Such a child would retain the forces of childhood (which are usually suppressed by current methods of education) until his tenth or eleventh year; he would tackle his lessons with a far greater activity of soul and have a much stronger grasp of the subjects. His faculties would thus become highly productive. It would be essential to keep such a child in a childlike state as long as possible, and then a clairvoyant would perceive that the astral sheath stripped off at puberty actually contains youthful, vigorous forces, very different from those usually in evidence. This astral sheath could then be used by a Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. Not only would a prolongation of the years of youth be achieved by such an experiment but certain childlike, youthful forces would be able to permeate the astral sheath, so that a Being who were to descend from spiritual heights could be nourished and rejuvenated by these forces. Nobody, however, should attempt to make this experiment; it is not an ideal for education. Certain things must still be left to the Gods. Gods can do this kind of thing, but not man. And if you hear of some personality destined to do creative work in a particular field that he seemed for a long time to be untalented and was for years considered a simpleton, that intelligence developed in him only much later—then you will know that the Gods instituted this experiment; they guarded the childhood of such a human being and made him fit to learn only at a later period what is learnt much earlier in normal life. This is especially the case when wide-awake children easily grasp stories told to them, yet when they go to school learn nothing at all. The Gods are making with them the experiment of which I have spoken. Something of the kind—only on a far, far grander scale—had to happen in the case of the Jesus-child who was then to deliver to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha such an infinitely fertile astral sheath. (Here we come to a mysterious fact which everyone is free to believe or not to believe, but which may now be communicated to duly prepared Anthroposophists. Examine all the facts at your disposal in the Gospels or in history and you will find everything substantiated by the facts of the physical plane if you approach these facts in the right way and do not judge too precipitately. The occultist who presents facts of the higher worlds entrusts them to humanity; and if they come from the right source he can say: you may test them as severely as you like, but if you do so fairly, you will find them all substantiated by what can be learnt in the physical world from documents and the findings of science.) It was essential that there should be born of the parents spoken of in the Gospel of St. Luke a child who brought with him youthful forces of a very special kind and that these forces should be preserved in their pristine healthiness and vigour. Under ordinary circumstances no child could have been found in whom the forces of childhood and youth were present in the state of freshness required at that time. In the whole range of humanity, if normal conditions alone had prevailed, nowhere could such an Individuality, nowhere could parents have been found such as were necessary for an incarnation of that kind. Very special measures were essential. To understand this we must recall certain facts already known to us. Present-day humanity can be traced back through various epochs to the primeval humanity of ancient Atlantis. Atlantean humanity in turn leads back to that of ancient Lemuria. Spiritual science is able to reveal facts concerning the evolution of humanity very different from those presented by external science which can have recourse only to data of the material world. Spiritual science tells us that humanity passed through a stage of Graeco-Latin civilization which was preceded by the Egypto-Chaldean, the ancient Persian and the ancient Indian civilizations. Then we come to the great catastrophe which entirely changed the face of the Earth. Before that catastrophe a great continent stretched across the area now covered by the Atlantic Ocean: this was ancient Atlantis. The regions occupied to-day by the European, Asiatic and African peoples were mostly still under water. Through the great Atlantean catastrophe the whole countenance of the Earth was changed. Humanity had for the most part settled in Atlantis and underwent evolution there. The constitution of the men of Atlantis was, of course, very different from that of men to-day. When the time of the catastrophe drew near, the great clairvoyant leaders and priests, foreseeing what was to happen, guided men to the East, and also to the West. Those who were led to the West were the ancestors of the later American Indians. Our own progenitors too were among the old Atlanteans. The inhabitants of Atlantis were in their turn the descendants of an earlier and again very different humanity living on the continent of ancient Lemuria between the present continents of Asia, Africa and Australia. (You will find a detailed account in my book Occult Science2 and I will now select the relevant facts only.) When we look back in the Akashic Chronicle to very ancient times the most wonderful corroboration is forthcoming of what is to be read in the Bible and other religious texts; indeed, it is only then that we learn to understand their contents in the right way. The reference in the Bible to a single pair of human beings, Adam and Eve, from whom all humanity has descended, was a problem with which men in the mid-nineteenth century were deeply preoccupied from the scientific standpoint. The Akashic Chronicle reveals that the Earth is of immense antiquity and that even the Lemurian epoch was preceded by another. We learn from the book Occult Science that the Earth is the re-embodiment of the earlier planetary embodiments of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. We learn too that the Earth, in the course of its gradual evolution, was destined to add the Ego, the fourth principle of human nature, to the other three bodies which had been developed during the previous embodiments: the physical body (in rudimentary form) on Old Saturn, the etheric body on Old Sun, the astral body on Old Moon. Everything that preceded the Lemurian epoch was merely preparation for the Earth's mission. During the Lemurian epoch man assumed a form that made it possible for him to develop his fourth principle, the Ego. At that time the first seed began to form for the development of an Ego in the other three principles. Hence we can say that the changes which took place on Earth enabled man to become the bearer of an Ego. Before the Lemurian epoch the Earth was also inhabited, but by human beings who as yet bore no Ego within them. They consisted of the principles that had been brought over from their former development during the planetary evolutions of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. These human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body. We know of the processes in the universe which led to the next stage in man's evolution. At the beginning of its present embodiment the Earth was united with Sun and Moon; then the Sun separated off, leaving behind a planetary body comprising the present Earth and Moon. If the Earth had remained united with the Moon, man's whole make-up would have become hard and ligneous, would have shrivelled. In order to avert this it was necessary for all the Moon-substances and beings to be cast out. Thereby the human form was rescued from the danger of hardening and it became possible for man to assume his present structure. It was only after the separation of the Moon that the possibility arose for him to become the bearer of an Ego. This did not, of course, take place all at once. After the Sun had slowly separated and while the Moon was still contained within the Earth, certain conditions arose which prevented the further evolution of mankind; physical matter became increasingly dense and a process of hardening had, in fact, already begun. Human souls—they were then at a lower stage of development—were passing through incarnations, through successive embodiments; in other words, man's in-most being left his outer form and passed through a spiritual world in order then to reappear in a new incarnation. But before the separation of the Moon a difficult period occurred in the evolution of the Earth. Certain human souls who, having left their bodies, were living in the spiritual world, wanted to descend again to the Earth; but the human substance now to be found there was too hard and ligneous to enable them to incarnate. A time came when souls wishing to descend found it impossible to incarnate again because the earthly bodies were unsuitable for them. Only the very strongest souls were able to master the hardened matter sufficiently to incarnate on the Earth; the others were obliged to withdraw again into the spiritual world. There were periods before the separation of the Moon when these conditions prevailed. The number of strong souls able to conquer matter and populate the Earth became steadily less, with the result that prior to the Lemurian epoch there was a period when wide areas of the Earth were barren and the population less and less numerous, because souls desiring to descend could find no suitable bodies. What happened to these souls? They were transported to the other planets which had formed meanwhile out of the universal substance. Certain souls were transported to Saturn, others to Jupiter, Mars, Venus or Mercury. There was a period when only the very strongest souls were able to come to the Earth during its great winter. The weaker souls had to be taken into the guardianship of the other planets of our solar system. During the Lemurian epoch there was actually a time when it may be said—with approximate accuracy at any rate—that there was a single couple in existence, one main pair (Haupt-paar) which had retained sufficient strength to master the stubborn substance and to incarnate on the Earth, to ‘hold out’ as it were through the period when the Moon was separating from the Earth. This separation made it possible again for human substance to be refined and rendered suitable to receive the weaker souls; the descendants of this one main pair were therefore able to live in more pliable substance than had been available before the separation of the Moon. Then, by degrees, all the souls returned to the Earth from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Saturn; and through propagation the souls gradually returning to the Earth from the planets constituted the descendants of the first main pair. Thus the Earth was re-peopled. And during the latter part of the Lemurian until far into the Atlantean epoch, an ever-increasing number of souls descended, having waited on the other planets until a time came when they were able to incarnate in earthly bodies. In this way the Earth was re-populated and the Atlantean peoples came into existence, guided by the Atlantean Initiates in the “Oracles”.3 In ancient Atlantis there were great sanctuaries where Initiates worked. These sanctuaries were organized in such a way that one might be called the ‘Mars Oracle’, another the ‘Jupiter Oracle’, another the ‘Saturn Oracle’ and so on. The variety of these Oracle-sanctuaries was due to the differences among human beings. For those souls who had waited on Mars, instruction and guidance were provided in the Mars Oracles; for those who had waited on Jupiter, in the Jupiter Oracles, and so on. Only a few chosen pupils could be instructed in the great Sun Oracle. These were the most direct descendants of the main pair who had lived through the Earth's critical period—the strong, ancestral couple called in the Bible ‘Adam and Eve’. There we find something that tallies exactly with the facts revealed by the Akashic Chronicle, so that the Bible is substantiated even where its content seems improbable. At the head of the Sun Oracle to which the other Oracles were subordinate was the greatest of the Atlantean Initiates, the Sun-Initiate, who was also the ‘Manu’, the leader of the Atlantean peoples. When the time of the great catastrophe was approaching, the Manu assumed the task of leading to the East those whom he found suitable for his mission—which was to establish a starting-point for the civilizations of the post-Atlantean epoch. This Initiate gathered around him men who always included the most direct descendants of ‘Adam and Eve’, the first ancestral pair who had survived the Earth's winter. These men were brought up and trained in the immediate environment of the great Initiate. The whole of the teaching imparted to them was organized in such a way that at the appropriate point of time in evolution it was always possible for the right influences to be sent forth from the sanctuary led by the Manu, the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. Let us suppose that at a certain point in evolution a rejuvenation of civilization was necessary; traditions preserved in humanity had become antiquated and required a new impetus; a new culture needed to be inaugurated. Provision for this had to be made—and was actually made, in many different ways—in the sanctuary under the great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. During the first period of the post-Atlantean epoch, men specially prepared were sent to one place or another in order to carry into the world, as the result of their careful training, what might be required by the people concerned. This Oracle-sanctuary which was situated in a hidden region of Asia, never failed to provide for the right influence to be exercised upon the particular civilizations. Five to six centuries after the advent of the great Buddha, there dawned a very crucial time. Buddhism had become in need of rejuvenation. The mature and sublime conceptions taught by Buddha needed to pass through a fountain of youth in order that they might be revealed to mankind in a new form, filled with fresh, rejuvenating forces. Very special forces had to be provided for humanity. These forces were not to be found in any single individual who had worked in the world outside. Whoever works for the world wears out his strength, and this wearing out of strength simply means ‘growing old’. Civilization after civilization arose at various points of time: first, the ancient Indian, then the ancient Persian, then the Egypto-Chaldean, and so on; great and notable leaders of humanity were at all times present—leaders who devoted their highest and best forces to humanity and its progress. The Holy Rishis, Zarathustra who was the inaugurator of the Persian civilization, Hermes, Moses, the leaders of Chaldean culture—all devoted their forces to the same end. By virtue of their achievements they were the best leaders for their times. Think of some personality in ancient India: he incarnated again and again, reappeared in this or that incarnation, in the Persian, in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—and his soul became more and more mature; he rose to stages of greater maturity but thereby lost the fresh force of youth. A man may be capable of momentous achievements when he has become a mature soul as the result of efforts made in the course of many incarnations—but his soul has aged. He may be able to give splendid teaching, he may achieve a great deal for humanity, but he would have had to sacrifice his youthful freshness and vigour while thus evolving to higher stages. Let us take one of the greatest Individualities who have worked in the course of human evolution: Zarathustra. It was he who brought the sublime message of the Sun Spirit from the profoundest depths of the spiritual world to the humanity of his time; it was he who directed the souls of men to the great Spirit who later appeared as Christ; it was he who proclaimed: ‘In the Sun lives Ahura Mazdao, and He will come to the Earth!’ Zarathustra spoke words of immense significance concerning Ahura Mazdao. Only his profound spiritual knowledge and highly developed clairvoyance could behold that Being of whom the Holy Rishis said that He, ‘Vishva Karman’, dwelt beyond their sphere. This was the same Being whom Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’ and whose significance for humanity he proclaimed. A spirit of great maturity lived in the body of Zarathustra, even in the days when he founded the ancient Persian civilization. We can well imagine that this Individuality rose to higher and higher stages during his subsequent incarnations, becoming more and more mature, more and more capable of the greatest sacrifices on behalf of humanity. Those of you who have heard other lectures of mine will know that Zarathustra gave up his astral body to Hermes, the leader of the Egyptian civilization, and his etheric body to Moses, the leader of the Hebrews. Such deeds can be accomplished only by a soul of very advanced development. Zarathustra was then reborn in Chaldea six hundred years before our era (at the time of Buddha in India) and worked there as the great teacher ‘Nazarathos’ or ‘Zaratas’, who was also the teacher of Pythagoras. All this was within the power of the former leader and inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Since the days of ancient Persia he had become more and more mature, but when Buddhism needed rejuvenation this task was not within his powers, as you will understand from the foregoing. It was not possible for him to provide youthful forces, developed under childlike conditions until puberty, which could then be given over to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Precisely because he had reached such a high stage of development it would not have been possible for Zarathustra to develop as a child at the beginning of our era in such a way that the required results would have been forthcoming. Were we to review all the Individualities whose powers were unfolded at that time, we should find no single one capable of furnishing, in his twelfth year, such forces as were needed for the rejuvenation of Buddhism. Zarathustra was a great and unique Individuality, an altogether exceptional case. Yet not even Zarathustra himself could have ensouled the body of Jesus up to the time of puberty in such a way as to enable the discarded astral sheath to unite with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Whence, then, came the great vivifying, vitalising power of the Nathan Jesus-child? It came from the Mother-Lodge of humanity directed by the sublime Sun-Initiate, the Manu. A great individualised power (eine grosse individuelle Kraft) had there been nurtured and fostered. This individualised power, this ‘Individuality’, was then sent down into the child born of the parents called ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. Who was this Being? To answer this question we must go back to the time before the Luciferic influence had penetrated into the astral body of man. This influence approached humanity at the time when the ancestral human couple were living on the Earth. This ancestral couple had been strong enough to master human substance and to incarnate, but had not been strong enough to resist the Luciferic influence. The effects of the influence extended into the astral bodies of this couple too, with the consequence that it was impossible to allow all the forces that were in ‘Adam and Eve’ to be transmitted to their descendants. The physical body had necessarily to be transmitted through the generations, but the leadership of humanity held back a portion of the etheric body. This was expressed by saying: ‘Men have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’—that is to say, they have partaken of the Luciferic influence; but it was also said: ‘The possibility of eating also of the Tree of Life must now be taken from them.’ This means that certain of the forces of the etheric body were kept back and did not pass on to the descendants. Thus after the Fall, certain forces were no longer in ‘Adam’, and the still guiltless part of his being was nurtured and fostered in the great Mother-Lodge of humanity. This was, so to speak, the Adam-soul as yet untouched by human guilt, not yet entangled in what had actually caused the ‘Fall’ of man. These pristine forces of the Adam-Individuality were preserved; they were there and were then led as a provisional ‘Ego’ to the child born to Joseph and Mary. Thus in his early years this Jesus-child bore within him the power of the original progenitor of earthly humanity. This soul had remained young in the truest sense. It had not been led through incarnations but had been kept at a very early stage—like the child in our hypothetical educational experiment. Who, then, was the Being in the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line? The progenitor of humanity, the ‘old Adam’ as a ‘new Adam!’ This secret was known to St. Paul and lies behind his words. And St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel—who was a pupil of St. Paul—knew it too. For this reason he speaks of it in a special way. He knew that a very definite process was necessary in order that this spiritual substance might be led down to humanity; he knew that a blood-relationship reaching back to ‘Adam’ was necessary. Hence for Joseph he shows a lineage reaching back to Adam who issued directly from the spiritual world and in the words of the Gospel was a ‘son of God’. The sequence of generations is traced back to God himself. A mystery of great significance is contained in the genealogical chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, namely that homogeneous blood had to flow through the generations and unbroken sequence be maintained until the last descendant, in order that the spirit too might he led down to the descendants when the time was fulfilled. And so this infinitely youthful Being was united with the body born of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—a Being untouched by earthly destinies, a young soul whose powers, if we wanted to discover their origin, would have to be traced back to ancient Lemuria. This Being alone was strong enough to penetrate into the astral sheath and, when this sheath was detached, to pass over to it the forces it needed in order to establish a living union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. We may therefore ask: What is actually described to us in the Gospel of St. Luke when it speaks of Jesus of Nazareth? In the first place it describes a human being whose physical body, in respect of blood-kinship, is to be traced back to Adam—to the times when, in the period of devastation on the Earth, humanity was saved through an ancestral pair. It further describes the incarnation of a soul who had waited the longest before incarnating. In the Nathan Jesus-child there was present the Adam-soul as it was before the Fall—the soul which had waited longest. We may therefore say, fantastic as it will seem to modern humanity, that the Individuality who had been led into the Jesus-child by the great Mother-Lodge had not only descended from the physically oldest generations of mankind but was also, in a sense, the incarnation of the very first member of humanity. We know now who was presented in the temple and shown to Simeon, and who, according to St. Luke, was the ‘Son of God’. St. Luke was not speaking of the present human being but was testifying that this was the reincarnation of a Being who was the earliest blood-ancestor of all the generations. And now to summarize what has been said. In the fifth–sixth century before our era there lived in India the great Bodhisattva whose mission it was to bring to humanity truths that were gradually to arise in humanity itself. He gave the impulse for this and thereby became Buddha. Hence he does not again appear in an earthly body; he appears in the Nirmanakaya, the ‘Body of Transformation’, but only as far as the etheric-astral world. The shepherds, being for the moment clairvoyant, see him in the form of the angelic host, for they are meant to behold in vision what is being announced to them. In his Nirmanakaya the Buddha inclines over the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—for a very special purpose. What the Buddha had been able to bring to humanity needed to be present in a mature form; it was difficult to understand for it came from great spiritual heights. If what Buddha had achieved hitherto was to become universally fruitful, it was necessary for an entirely fresh and youthful force to flow into it. He had to draw this force from the Earth by inclining over a human child from whom he could receive all the youthful forces from the astral sheath when it was detached. Such a child had been born from the line of generations—a child whose lineage the one who best understood it could trace back to the ancestor of humanity, back to the young soul of humanity during the Lemurian age, a child to whom he (St. Luke) could point as the reincarnated ‘new Adam’. This child, whose soul was the mother-soul of humanity—a soul kept young through the ages—lived in such a way that all his youthful forces rayed into the astral body, and when the astral sheath was detached it rose upwards and united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. These facts do not, however, include everything that helps us to understand the wonderful Event of Palestine; they present one aspect only. We now know who was born in Bethlehem when Joseph and Mary travelled thither from Nazareth, and we know whose coming had been announced to the shepherds; but that is not all. Much that is strange and significant took place at the beginning of our era in order to bring about the greatest Event in the evolution of humanity. For a better understanding of what gradually led up to that Event, we must still consider the following. In the ancient Hebrew people there was a line of generations descending from David. We learn from the Bible that David had two sons, Solomon and Nathan. Thus two lines of descent, the ‘Solomon line’ and the ‘Nathan line’ stemmed from David. Leaving aside the intermediate members, we can say: At the beginning of our era, descendants both of the Solomon line and of the Nathan line of the House of David were living in Palestine. In Nazareth there lived a man named ‘Joseph’, a descendant of the Nathan line; he had a wife, ‘Mary’. And in Bethlehem there lived a descendant of the Solomon line, also named ‘Joseph’. It is not in the least surprising that there were two men of David's lineage named Joseph and that each was married to a Mary as the Bible says. Thus at the beginning of our era there were two couples in Palestine, both bearing the names of ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’. The Bethlehem couple traced back its origin to the ‘Solomon’ or kingly line of the House of David, and the other (the Nazareth couple) to the ‘Nathan’ or priestly line. To this latter couple (of the Nathan line) was born the child described to you yesterday and to-day. This child provided an astral sheath that could eventually be absorbed into the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. At the time when the child was due to be born, this couple of the Nathan lineage journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem as St. Luke relates—‘to be taxed’. The genealogical table is given in his Gospel. The other couple did not originally reside in Nazareth but in Bethlehem; this is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This couple of the Solomon line also had a child named ‘Jesus’. In the body of this child too a great Individuality was living, but the child had a different task to fulfil. The wisdom of the world is indeed profound! It was not the function of this child to impart fresh forces of youth to the astral sheath; his mission was to bring to humanity that which only a mature soul can bring. Under the guidance of all the Powers concerned, this child was able to be the reincarnation of the Individuality who had once taught the mysteries of Ahura Mazdao to men in ancient Persia; who had once given up his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses, and who had appeared again as Zarathas or Nazarathos, the great teacher of Pythagoras in ancient Chaldea. This Individuality was none other than Zarathustra. The Ego of Zarathustra was reincarnated in the child of whom the Gospel of St. Matthew relates that he was born of a couple named Joseph and Mary who descended from the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David and resided, originally, in Bethlehem. Thus we find one part of the truth presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew and the other part in that of St. Luke. Both accounts must be taken literally, for truth is complex. We know now who was born from the priestly line of the House of David. But we know too that from the kingly line there was born the Individuality who had once worked in ancient Persia as Zarathustra and had inaugurated the ‘kingly’ or ‘magic’ science of the ancient Persian kingdom. Thus the two Individualities lived side by side: the young Adam-Individuality in the child of the priestly line of the House of David, and the Zarathustra-Individuality in the child of the kingly line. How and why all this took place, and how evolution was further guided—of this we shall say more tomorrow.
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Buddha and Zarathustra Streams Converge
19 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Buddha and Zarathustra Streams Converge
19 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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[ 1 ] Every great spiritual stream in the world has its particular mission. These streams are not isolated and are separated only during certain epochs; then they merge and mutually fructify each other. The Event of Palestine is an illustration of one most significant fusion of the spiritual streams in humanity. We have set ourselves the task of understanding the Event of Palestine with increasing clarity. But conceptions of the world and of life do not, as some people seem to imagine, move through the air as pure abstractions and ultimately unite. They are borne by Beings, by Individualities. When a system of thought comes into existence for the first time it must be presented by an Individuality, and when these spiritual streams unite and fertilize each other, something quite definite must also happen in the Individualities who are the bearers of the world-conceptions in question. [ 2 ] The concrete facts connected with the fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism in the Event of Palestine as described in yesterday's lecture, may have seemed very complicated. But if we were content to speak of the happenings in an abstract way and not in concrete detail, it would only be necessary to show how these two streams united. As anthroposophists, however, it is our task to give accounts of the two Individualities who were the actual bearers of these world-conceptions as well as to call attention to the contents of the teachings. Anthroposophists must always endeavour to get away from abstractions and arrive at concrete realities, so you should not be surprised to find such complicated facts connected with a happening as momentous as the fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. [ 3 ] This fusion necessarily entailed slow and gradual preparation. We have heard how Buddhism streamed into and worked in the personality born as the child of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line of the House of David, as related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Joseph and Mary of the Solomon line of the House of David resided originally in Bethlehem with their child Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This child of the Solomon line bore within him the Individuality who, as Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, had inaugurated the ancient Persian civilization. Thus at the beginning of our era, side by side and represented by actual Individualities, we have the stream of Buddhism on the one hand (as described in the Gospel of St. Luke), and on the other the stream of Zoroastrianism in the Jesus of the Solomon line (as described in the Gospel of St. Matthew). The births of the two boys did not occur at exactly the same time. [ 4 ] I shall have to say things to-day that are not found in the Gospels; but you will understand the Bible all the better if you learn from investigations of the Akashic Chronicle something about the consequences and effects of facts indicated in the Gospels. It must never be forgotten that the words at the end of the Gospel of St. John hold good for all the Gospels—that the world itself could not contain the books that would have to be written if all the facts were presented. The revelations vouchsafed to humanity through Christianity are not of a kind that could have been written down and presented to the world once and for ever as a complete record. Christ's words are true: ‘I am with you always, until the end of the world!’ He is there not as a dead but as a living Being, and what He has to reveal can always be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes are opened. Christianity is a living stream and its revelations will endure as long as human beings are able to receive them. Thus certain facts will be presented to-day, the consequences of which are indicated in the Gospels, though not the facts themselves. Nevertheless you can put them to the test and you will find them substantiated. [ 5 ] The births of the two Jesus children were separated by a period of a few months. But Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke and John the Baptist were both born too late to have been victims of the so-called ‘massacre of the innocents’. Has the thought never struck you that those who read about the Bethlehem massacre must ask themselves: How could there have been a John? But the facts can be substantiated in all respects. The Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was taken to Egypt by his parents, and John, supposedly, was born shortly before or about the same time. According to the usual view, John remained in Palestine, but in that case he would certainly have been a victim of Herod's murderous deed. You see how necessary it is to devote serious thought to these things; for if all the children of two years old and younger were actually put to death at that time, John would have been one of them. But this riddle will become intelligible if, in the light of the facts disclosed by the Akashic Chronicle, you realize that the events related in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew did not take place at the same time. The Nathan Jesus was born after the Bethlehem massacre; so too was John. Although the interval was only a matter of months, it was long enough to make these facts possible. [ 6 ] You will also learn to understand the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the light of the more intimate facts. In this boy was reincarnated the Zarathustra-Individuality, from whom the people of ancient Persia had once received the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Being. We know that this Sun Being must be regarded as the soul and spirit of the external, physical sun. Hence Zarathustra was able to say: ‘Behold not only the radiance of the physical sun; behold, too, the mighty Being who sends down His spiritual blessings as the physical sun sends down its beneficient light and warmth!’—Ahura Mazdao, later called the Christ—it was He whom Zarathustra proclaimed to the people of Persia, but not yet as a Being who had sojourned on the Earth. Pointing to the sun, Zarathustra could only say: ‘There is His habitation; He is gradually drawing near and one day He will live in a body on the Earth!’ [ 7 ] The great differences between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism are obvious as long as they were separate; but the differences were resolved through their union and rejuvenation in the events of Palestine. [ 8 ] Let us once again consider what Buddha gave to the world. Buddha's teaching was presented in the Eightfold Path—this being an enumeration of the qualities needed by the human soul if it is to escape the harsh effects of Karma. In course of time Buddha's teaching must be developed as compassion and love by men individually, through their own feelings and sense of morality. I also told you that when the Bodhisattva became Buddha, this was a crucial turning-point in evolution. Had the full revelation of the Bodhisattva in the body of Gautama Buddha not taken place at that time, it would not have been possible for the souls of all human beings to unfold what we call ‘law-abidingness’—‘Dharma’—which a man can only develop from his own being by expelling the content of his astral nature in order to liberate himself from all harsh effects of Karma. The Buddhist legend indicates this in a wonderful way by saying that Buddha succeeded in ‘turning the Wheel of the Law’. This means that the enlightenment of the Bodhisattva and his ascent to Buddhahood enabled a force to stream through the whole of humanity as the result of which men could now evolve ‘Dharma’ from their own souls and gradually fathom the profundities of the Eightfold Path. This possibility began when Buddha first evolved the teaching upon which the moral sense of men on Earth was actually to be based. Such was the task of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha. We see how individual tasks are allotted to the great Individualities when we find in Buddhism all that man can experience in his own soul as his great ideal. The ideal of the human soul what man is and can become—that is the essence of Buddha's teaching and it sufficed as far as his particular mission was concerned. [ 9 ] Everything in Buddhism has to do with inwardness, with human nature and its inner development; genuine, original Buddhism contained no ‘cosmology’—although it was introduced later on. The essential mission of the Bodhisattva was to bring to men the teaching of the deep inwardness of their own souls. Thus in certain sermons Buddha avoids any definite reference to the Cosmos. Everything is expressed in such a way that if the human soul allows itself to be influenced by Buddha's teaching, it can become more and more perfect. Man is regarded as a self-contained being apart from the great Universe whence he proceeded. It is because this was connected with the special mission of the Bodhisattva that Buddha's teaching, when truly understood, has such a warming, deepening effect upon the soul; for this reason too the teaching seems to those who concern themselves with it to be permeated with such intensity of feeling and such inner warmth when it appears again, rejuvenated, in the Gospel of St. Luke. [ 10 ] The task of the Individuality incarnated as Zarathustra in ancient Persia was altogether different—in point of fact exactly the opposite. Zarathustra taught of the God without; he taught men to apprehend the great Cosmos spiritually. Buddha directed man's attention to his own inner nature, saying that as the result of development there gradually appear, out of the previous state of ignorance, the ‘six organs’ of which we have spoken, namely, the five sense-organs and Manas. But everything within man was originally born out of the Cosmos. We should have no eye sensitive to light if the light itself had not brought the eye to birth from out of the organism. Goethe said: ‘The eye was created by the light for the light.’ This is a profound truth. The light formed the eye out of neutral organs once present in the human body. In the same way, all the spiritual forces in the Universe work formatively upon man. Everything within him was organized, to begin with, out of divine-spiritual forces. Hence for every ‘inner’ there is an ‘outer’. The forces that are found within man stream into him from outside. And it was the task of Zarathustra to point to the realities that are outside, in man's environment. Hence, for example, he spoke of the ‘Amshaspands’, the great Genii, of whom he enumerated six—in reality there are twelve, but the other six are hidden. These Amshaspands work from outside as the creators and moulders of the organs of the human being. Zarathustra showed that behind the human sense-organs stand the Creators of man; he pointed to the great Genii, to the powers and forces outside man. Buddha pointed to the forces working within man. Zarathustra also pointed to forces and beings below the Amshaspands, calling them the ‘Izards’ or ‘Izeds’. They too penetrate into man from outside in order to work at the inner organization of his bodily nature. Here again Zarathustra was directing attention to spiritual realities in the Cosmos, to external conditions. And whereas Buddha pointed to the actual thought-substance out of which the thoughts arise from the human soul, Zarathustra pointed to the ‘Ferruers’ or ‘Fravashars’, to the ‘world-creative thoughts’ pervading the Universe and surrounding us everywhere. For the thoughts that arise in man are everywhere in existence in the world outside. [ 11 ] Thus it was the mission of Zarathustra to inculcate into men an attitude of mind particularly concerned with analysing the phenomena of the external world, to present a view of the Universe to a people whose task was to labour in the outer world. This mission was in keeping with the special characteristics of the ancient Persians and the function of Zarathustra was to promote energy and efficiency in this work, although his methods may have taken a form that would be repellant to modern man. Zarathustra's mission was to engender vigour, efficiency and certainty of aim in outer activity through the knowledge that man has not only shelter and support in his own inner being but rests in the bosom of a divine-spiritual world and can therefore say to himself: ‘Whatever your place in the world may be, you are not alone. You live in a Cosmos permeated by Spirit, among cosmic Gods and spiritual Beings; you are born of the Spirit and rest in the Spirit; with every indrawn breath you inhale divine Spirit; with every exhalation you may make an offering to the great Spirit!’ Because of his special mission, Zarathustra's own Initiation was necessarily different from that of the other great missionaries of humanity. [ 12 ] Let us consider what the Individuality incarnated in Zarathustra was able to achieve. So lofty was his stage of development that he could make provision in advance for the next (Egyptian) stream of culture. Zarathustra had two pupils: the Individualities who appeared again later on as the Egyptian Hermes and as Moses respectively. When these two Individualities were again incarnated in order to carry forward their work for humanity, the astral body sacrificed by Zarathustra was integrated into the Egyptian Hermes. Hermes bore within him the astral body of Zarathustra which had been transmitted to him in order that all the knowledge of the Universe possessed by Zarathustra might again be made manifest and take effect in the outer world. The etheric body of Zarathustra was transmitted to Moses. And because whatever evolves in Time is connected with the etheric body, when Moses became conscious of the secrets contained in his etheric body, he was able to create the mighty pictures of happenings in Time presented in Genesis. In this way Zarathustra worked on through the power of his Individuality, inaugurating and influencing Egyptian culture and the culture of the ancient Hebrews that issued from it. [ 13 ] Through his Ego too, such an Individuality is destined to fulfil a great mission. The Ego of Zarathustra incarnated again and again in other personalities, for an Individuality of such advanced development can always consecrate an astral body and strengthen an etheric body for his own use, even when he has relinquished his original bodies to others. Thus six hundred years before our era, Zarathustra was born again in ancient Chaldea as Zarathas or Nazarathos, who became the teacher of the Chaldean Mystery-schools; he was also the teacher of Pythagoras and again acquired profound insight into the phenomena of the outer world. If we steep ourselves in the wisdom of the Chaldeans with the help, not of Anthropology but of Anthroposophy, an inkling will dawn in us of what Zarathustra, as Zarathas or Nazarathos, taught in the Mystery-schools of ancient Chaldea. [ 14 ] The whole of his teaching, as we have heard, was given with the aim of bringing about concord and harmony in the outer world. His mission also included the art of organizing empires and institutions in keeping with the progress of humanity and with order in the social life. Hence those who were his pupils might rightly be called, not only great ‘Magi’, great ‘Initiates’, but also ‘Kings’, that is to say, men versed in the art of establishing social order in the external world. [ 15 ] Deep and fervent attachment to the Individuality (not the personality) of Zarathustra prevailed in the Mystery-schools of Chaldea. These Wise Men of the East felt that they were intimately connected with their great leader. They saw in him the ‘Star of Humanity’, for ‘Zoroaster’ (Zarathustra) means ‘Golden Star’, or ‘Star of Splendour’. They saw in him a reflection of the Sun itself. And with their profound wisdom they could not fail to know when their Master was born again in Bethlehem. Led by their ‘Star’, they brought as offerings to him the outer symbols for the most precious gift he had been able to bestow upon men. This most precious gift was knowledge of the outer world, of the mysteries of the Cosmos received into the human astral body in thinking, feeling and willing; hence the pupils of Zarathustra strove to impregnate these soul-forces with the wisdom that can be drawn from the deep foundations of the divine-spiritual world. Symbols for this knowledge—which can be acquired by mastering the secrets of the outer world—were gold, frankincense and myrrh: gold the symbol of thinking, frankincense—the symbol of the piety which pervades man as feeling, and myrrh—the symbol of the power of will. Thus by appearing before their Master when he was born again in Bethlehem the Magi gave evidence of their union with him. The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates what is literally true when he describes how the Wise Men among whom Zarathustra had once worked knew that he had reappeared among men, and how they expressed their connection with him through the three symbols of gold, frankincense and myrrh—the symbols for the precious gift he had bestowed upon them. [ 16 ] The need now was that Zarathustra, as Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David, should be able to work with all possible power in order to give again to men, in a rejuvenated form, everything he had already given in earlier times. For this purpose he had to gather together and concentrate all the power he had ever possessed. Hence he could not be born in a body from the priestly line of the House of David but only in one from the kingly line. In this way the Gospel of St. Matthew indicates the connection of the kingly name in ancient Persia with the ancestry of the child in whom Zarathustra was incarnated. Indications of these happenings are also contained in ancient Books of Wisdom originating in the Near East. Whoever really understands these Books of Wisdom reads them differently from those who are ignorant of the facts and therefore confuse everything. In the Old Testament there are, for instance, two prophecies: one in the apocryphal Books of Enoch pointing more to the Nathan Messiah of the priestly line, and the other in the Psalms referring to the Messiah of the kingly line. Every detail in the scriptures harmonizes with the facts that can be ascertained from the Akashic Chronicle. It was necessary for Zarathustra to gather together all the forces he had formerly possessed. He had surrendered his astral and etheric bodies to Hermes and Moses respectively, and through them to Egyptian and Hebraic culture. It was necessary for him to re-unite with these forces, as it were to fetch back from Egypt the forces of his etheric body. A profound mystery is here revealed to us: Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David, the reincarnated Zarathustra, was led to Egypt, for in Egypt were the forces that had streamed from his astral body and his etheric body when the former had been bestowed upon Hermes and the latter upon Moses. Because he had influenced the culture and civilization of Egypt, he had to gather to himself the forces he had once relinquished. Hence the ‘Flight into Egypt’ and its spiritual consequences: the absorption of all the forces he now needed in order to give again to men in full strength and in a rejuvenated form, what he had bestowed upon them in past ages. [ 17 ] Thus the history of the Jesus whose parents resided originally in Bethlehem is correctly related by St. Matthew. St. Luke relates only that the parents of the Jesus of whom he is writing resided in Nazareth, that they went to Bethlehem to be ‘taxed’ and that Jesus was born during that short period. The parents then returned to Nazareth with the child. In the Gospel of St. Matthew we are told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that he had to be taken to Egypt. It was after their return from Egypt that the parents settled in Nazareth, for the child who was the reincarnation of Zarathustra was destined to grow up near the child who represented the other stream—the stream of Buddhism. Thus the two streams were brought together in actual reality. [ 18 ] The Gospels become especially profound when they are indicating essential facts. The quality in the human being that is connected more with will and power, with the ‘kingly’ nature (speaking in the technical sense), is known by those cognisant of the mysteries of existence to be transmitted by the paternal element in heredity. On the other hand, the inner nature that is connected with wisdom and inner mobility of spirit, is transmitted by the maternal element. With his profound insight into the mysteries of existence, Goethe hints at this in the words:
[ 19 ] You can find this truth substantiated again and again in the world. Stature, the outer form, whatever expresses itself directly in the outer structure, and in ‘life's serious conduct’—this is connected with the character of the Ego and is inherited from the paternal element. For this reason the Solomon Jesus had to inherit power from the father, because it was his mission to transmit to the world the divine forces radiating through the world in Space. This is expressed by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the most wonderful way. The incarnation of an Individuality was announced from the spiritual world as an event of great significance and it was announced, not to Mary, but to Joseph, the father. Truths of immense profundity lie behind all this; such things must never be regarded as fortuitous. Inner traits and qualities such as are inherited from the mother, were transmitted to the Jesus of the Nathan line. Hence the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was announced to the mother. Such is the profundity of the facts narrated in the scriptures!—But let us continue. [ 20 ] The other facts described are also full of significance. A forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth was to arise in John the Baptist. To say more about the Individuality of the Baptist will only be possible as time goes on. But to begin with we will consider the picture presented to us—John as the herald of the Being who was to come in Jesus. John proclaimed this by gathering together and summarizing with infinite power everything contained in the old Law. What the Baptist wished to bring home to men was that there must be observance of what was written in the old Law but had grown old in civilization and had been forgotten; it was mature, but was no longer heeded. Therefore what John required above all was the power possessed by a soul born as a mature—even overmature—soul into the world. He was born of old parents; from the very beginning his astral body was pure and cleansed of all the forces which degrade man, because the aged parents were unaffected by passion and desire. There again, profound wisdom is expressed in the Gospel of St. Luke. For such an Individuality, too, provision is made in the Mother-Lodge of humanity. Where the great Manu guides and directs the processes of evolution in the spiritual realm, from thence the streams are sent whithersoever they are needed. An Ego such as that of John the Baptist was born into a body under the immediate guidance and direction of the great Mother-Lodge of humanity in the central sanctuary of earthly spiritual life. The John-Ego descended from the same holy region (Stätte) as that from which the soul-being of the Jesus-child of the Gospel of St. Luke descended, save that upon Jesus there were chiefly bestowed qualities not yet permeated by an Ego in which egoistic traits had developed: that is to say, a young soul was guided to the place where the reborn Adam was to incarnate. [ 21 ] It will seem strange to you that a soul without a really developed Ego could be guided from the great Mother-Lodge to a certain place. But the same Ego that was withheld from the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was bestowed upon the body of John the Baptist; thus the soul-being in Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke and the Ego-being in John the Baptist were inwardly related from the beginning. Now when the human embryo develops in the body of the mother, the Ego unites with the other members of the human organism in the third week, but does not come into operation until the last months before birth and then only gradually. Not until then does the Ego become active as an inner force; in a normal case, when an Ego quickens an embryo, we have to do with an Ego that has come from earlier incarnations. In the case of John, however, the Ego in question was inwardly related to the soul-being of the Nathan Jesus. Hence according to the Gospel of St. Luke, the mother of Jesus went to the mother of John the Baptist when the latter was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the embryo that in other cases is quickened by its own Ego was here quickened through the medium of the other embryo. The child in the body of Elisabeth begins to move when the mother bearing the Nathan Jesus-child approaches; and it is the Ego through which the child in the other mother (Elisabeth) is quickened.1 (Luke I, 39–44). Such was the deep connection between the Being who was to bring about the fusion of the two spiritual streams and the other who was to announce His coming! [ 22 ] Events of great sublimity take place at the beginning of our era. When, as so often happens, people say that truth should be simple, this is due to indolence and a dislike of having to wrestle with many concepts; but the greatest truths can be apprehended only when the spiritual faculties are exerted to their utmost capacity. If considerable efforts are needed to describe a machine, it is surely unreasonable to demand that the greatest truths should also be the simplest! Truth is inevitably complicated, and the most strenuous efforts must be made if it is desired to acquire some understanding of the truths relating to the Events of Palestine. Nobody should lend himself to the objection that the facts are unduly complicated; they are complicated because here we have to do with the greatest of all happenings in the evolution of the Earth. [ 23 ] Thus we see two Jesus-children growing up. The son of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line was born of a young mother (in Hebrew the word ‘Alma’ would have been used), for a soul of such a nature must necessarily be born of a very young mother. After their return from Bethlehem this couple continued to live in Nazareth with their son. They had no other children; the mother was to be the mother of this Jesus only. When Joseph and Mary of the Solomon line returned with their son from Egypt, they settled in Nazareth and, as related in the Gospel of St. Mark, had several more children: Simon, Judas, Joseph, James and two sisters. (Mark VI, 3). The Jesus-child who bore within him the Individuality of Zarathustra unfolded with extraordinary rapidity powers that will inevitably be present when such a mighty Ego is working in a body. The nature of the Individuality in the body of the Nathan Jesus was altogether different, the most important factor there being the Nirmanakaya of Buddha overshadowing this child. Hence when the parents had returned from Bethlehem, the child is said to have been full of wisdom—that is, in his etheric body; he was “filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke II, 40). But he grew up in such a way that the ordinary human qualities connected with understanding and knowledge of the external world developed in him exceedingly slowly. A superficial observer would have called this child comparatively backward—if account had been taken only of his intellectual capacities. But instead there developed in him the power streaming from the overshadowing Nirmanakaya of Buddha. He unfolded a depth of inwardness comparable with nothing of the kind in the world, a power of feeling that had an extraordinary effect upon everyone around him. Thus in the Nathan Jesus we see a Being with infinite depths of feeling, and in the Solomon Jesus an Individuality of exceptional maturity, having profound understanding of the world. [ 24 ] Words of great significance had been spoken to the mother of the Nathan Jesus, the child of deep feeling. When Simeon stood before the newborn child and beheld above him the radiance of the Being he had been unable to see in India as the Buddha, he foretold the momentous events that were now to take place; but he spoke also of the ‘sword that would pierce the mother's heart’. These words too refer to something we shall endeavour to understand. [ 25 ] The parents were in friendly relationship and the children grew up as near neighbours until they were about twelve years old. When the Nathan Jesus reached this age his parents went to Jerusalem ‘after the custom’, to take part in the Feast of the Passover, and the child went with them, as was usual. We now find in the Gospel of St. Luke the mysterious narrative of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. As the parents were returning from the Feast they suddenly missed the boy; failing to find him among the company of travellers they turned back again and found him in the temple conversing with the learned doctors, all of whom were astonished at his wisdom. [ 26 ] What had happened? We will enquire of the imperishable Akashic Chronicle. The facts of existence are by no means simple. What had happened on this occasion may also happen in a different way elsewhere in the world. At a certain stage of development some individuality may need conditions differing from those that were present at the beginning of his life. Hence it repeatedly happens that someone lives to a certain age and then suddenly falls into a state of deathlike unconsciousness. A transformation takes place: his own Ego leaves him and another Ego passes into his bodily constitution. Such a change occurs in other cases too; it is a phenomenon known to every occultist. In the case of the twelve-year-old Jesus, the following happened. The Zarathustra-Ego which had lived hitherto in the body of the Jesus belonging to the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David in order to reach the highest level of his epoch, left that body and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus who then appeared as one transformed. His parents did not recognize him; nor did they understand his words, for now the Zarathustra-Ego was speaking out of the Nathan Jesus. This was the time when the Nirmanakaya of Buddha united with the cast-off astral sheath and when the Zarathustra-Ego passed into him. This child, now so changed that his parents did not know what to make of him, was taken home with them. [ 27 ] Not long afterwards the mother of the Nathan Jesus died, so that the child into whom the Zarathustra-Ego had now passed was orphaned on the mother's side. As we shall see, the fact that the mother died and the child was left an orphan is especially significant. Nor could the child of the Solomon line continue to live under ordinary conditions when the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him. Joseph of the Solomon line had already died, and the mother of the child who had once been the Solomon Jesus, together with her children James, Joseph, Simon, Judas and the two daughters, were taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph; so that Zarathustra (now in the body of the Nathan Jesus-child) was again living in the family (with the exception of the father) in which he had incarnated. In this way the two families were combined into one, and the mother of the brothers and sisters—as we may call them, for in respect of the Ego they were brothers and sisters—lived in the house of Joseph of the Nathan line with the Jesus whose native town—in the bodily sense—was Nazareth. [ 28 ] Here we see the actual fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. For the body now harbouring the mature Ego-soul of Zarathustra had been able to assimilate everything that resulted from the union of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha with the discarded astral sheath. Thus the Individuality now growing up as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ bore within him the Ego of Zarathustra irradiated and pervaded by the spiritual power of the rejuvenated Nirmanakaya of Buddha. In this sense Buddhism and Zoroastrianism united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. When Joseph of the Nathan line also died, comparatively soon, the Zarathustra-child was in very fact an orphan and felt himself as such; he was not the being he appeared to be according to his bodily descent; in respect of the spirit he was the reborn Zarathustra; in respect of bodily descent the father was Joseph of the Nathan line and the external world could have no other view. [ 29 ] St. Luke relates it and we must take his words exactly:
[ 30 ] and now it is not said simply that he was a ‘son’ of Joseph, but: ‘being as was supposed the son of Joseph’ (Luke III, 21–23)—for the Ego had originally incarnated in the Solomon Jesus and was therefore not connected fundamentally with the Nathan Joseph. [ 31 ] ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ was now a Being, whose inmost nature comprised all the blessings of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. A momentous destiny awaited him—a destiny altogether different from that of any others baptized by John in the Jordan. And we shall see that later on, when the Baptism took place, the Christ was received into the inmost nature of this Being. Then, too, the immortal part of the original mother of the Nathan Jesus descended from the spiritual world and transformed the mother who had been taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph, making her again virginal.2 Thus the soul of the mother whom the Nathan Jesus had lost was restored to him at the time of the Baptism in the Jordan. The mother who had remained to him harboured within her the soul of his original mother, called in the Bible the ‘Blessed Mary’.
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Mission of the Hebrews
20 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Mission of the Hebrews
20 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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It will be easier for us to understand details in the Gospel of St. Luke if during our preparatory study the beings and individualities concerned stand before our mind's eye as living figures. The need for a good deal of preliminary history must therefore not discourage us. First and foremost we must learn to know the great central Figure of the Gospels in the whole complexity of His nature, and also certain other facts essential to any real understanding of the Gospel of St. Luke. Let us first recall what has already been said about the Bodhisattva who in the fifth/sixth century before our era became Buddha. We have described what this most significant event meant for humanity and we will consider it in detail once again. The content of Buddha's teaching had at some given time to be transmitted to men as their own possession. In none of the epochs before Buddha could there have existed on the Earth a human being capable of discovering within himself the teaching of compassion and love as expressed in the Eightfold Path. Evolution had not progressed sufficiently to enable any human being to discover these truths through his own contemplation and deepened life of feeling. Everything in the world comes into being and develops; for everything in existence there must be a cause. How, for example, could men in earlier times have obeyed the principles subsequently expressed in the Eightfold Path? They could have done so only because these principles were handed down as tradition, were inculcated into them from the occult schools of the initiates and seers. It was the Bodhisattva who taught in the secret Mystery-schools, where it was possible to rise to the higher worlds and receive from those realms knowledge that could not yet be imparted directly to the human intellect. In ancient times this teaching had had to be instilled into humanity by those who were fortunate enough to come into direct contact with the teachers in the Mystery-schools. It was necessary for men to be influenced in such a way that their lives were governed by these principles, although they would not themselves have been capable of discovering them. Thus men who lived outside the Mysteries unconsciously obeyed the principles received from those who had access to them. As yet there existed on the Earth no human body constituted in a way that would have enabled a man to discover the content of the Eightfold Path himself, however deeply the spirit may have penetrated into him. The principles had to be revealed from above and then communicated in a suitable form. Consequently a Being such as the Bodhisattva, before he became Buddha, was never able to use a human body on Earth in the fullest sense. He could find no body capable of incorporating all the faculties through which he was to influence men. No such body existed. What, then, was necessary? How did the Bodhisattva incarnate? We must now ask this question. What the Bodhisattva was as a spiritual Being did not fully incarnate. Clairvoyant observation of a body ensouled by a Bodhisattva would have revealed that the body enclosed only part of his nature and that his etheric body towered far above the human sheath; his connection with the spiritual world was never wholly relinquished; he lived in a spiritual and in a physical body simultaneously. The transition from Bodhisattva to Buddha meant that for the first time there existed a body into which the Bodhisattva could fully descend and through which his powers could take effect. Thus he exemplified the ideal human stature which men must strive to emulate in order that each individual may eventually discover from within himself the teaching of the Eightfold Path, as the Bodhisattva himself discovered it under the Bodhi tree. Were we to examine the previous incarnations of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha we should find that part of his being was obliged to remain in the spiritual world; he could send only part of himself into the physical body. It was not until the fifth/sixth century B.C. that for the first time there existed a human organism into which the Bodhisattva could descend in the fullest sense, thus exemplifying the possibility that the principles of the Eightfold Path can be discovered by humanity itself through the moral tenor of the soul. The fact that some men lived with part of their being in the spiritual world was known to all religions and cognate modes of thought. It was known that there were Beings destined to work on the Earth, for whom human embodiment was too restricted to contain the whole Individuality. In the religious thought of Western Asia this kind of union of a higher Individuality with a physical body was called ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’. This is a quite definite, technical expression. In the language of those regions it would have been said of a Being such as a Bodhisattva while incarnated on Earth that he was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’—meaning that the forces and powers possessed by such a Being were not fully contained within his human organism and that something spiritual must work from outside. Thus it might with truth be said that the Buddha, in his previous incarnations, was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. Having grasped this we shall be able to understand what is said at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Luke. We know that in the etheric body of the Jesus-child of the Nathan line of the House of David there was present the hitherto untouched part of the etheric body that had been withdrawn from humanity at the time of the ‘Fall into sin’. The etheric substance withheld from Adam had been preserved and was sent down into this child. This was necessary in order that a being so young and entirely untouched by any experiences of earthly evolution might be in existence and assimilate all that he was destined to assimilate. Would an ordinary human being who had passed through incarnations since the Lemurian age have been able to receive the overshadowing power of Buddha's Nirmanakaya? No indeed! A human body of great perfection had to be made available, one that could only be produced through part of the etheric substance of Adam—untouched by all earthly influences—being united with the etheric body of this Jesus-child. This etheric substance was imbued with the forces that had worked upon Earth evolution before the Fall and now, in the Jesus-child, their power was immeasurably enhanced. This made it possible for the mysterious influence referred to in the lecture yesterday to be exercised by the mother of the Nathan Jesus upon the mother of the Baptist—that is to say upon John himself before he was born. It is also essential to understand the nature of the one known as John the Baptist. We can understand him only when we perceive the difference between the teaching given by Buddha in India and the teaching given to the ancient Hebrew people through Moses and his successors, the Hebrew prophets. Buddha imparted to mankind what the human soul can find as its own law and obey in order to purify itself and thus reach the highest level of morality attainable on Earth. The ‘Law of the Soul’—Dharma—was proclaimed through Buddha in such a way that at the highest stage of development attainable by human nature, man can discover it himself, in his own soul. Buddha was the first to reveal it. But the evolution of humanity does not by any means proceed in a straight line. The several streams of culture and civilization must fertilize each other. The Christ Event was to come to pass in Asia Minor and this made it necessary that the development of the people there should remain behind that of the people of India, in order that men in Asia Minor might receive in greater freshness, at a later period, what had been imparted to the people of India in a different form. Thus a people who developed in a quite different way and remained at a more backward stage than those living farther to the East, had to be established in Asia Minor. Whereas the people of the more distant East were destined by cosmic wisdom to advance to the stage of being able to behold the Bodhisattva as Buddha, it was necessary for the people of Asia Minor—especially the Hebrew people—to be left at a lower, more childlike stage. The same thing had to happen in the evolution of humanity on a large scale as might be seen on a small scale in the case of a human being who develops to a certain degree of maturity by his twentieth year and has acquired definite faculties. But acquired faculties are apt also to become shackles, hindrances. Such faculties tend to become fixed at the stage they have actually reached and to keep the person concerned at that stage. They have a firm hold upon him and later on, perhaps in his thirtieth year, it is not easy for him to transcend the stage reached when he was twenty. On the other hand, a second man who has kept himself longer in a childlike state and because he has acquired only very few faculties by his twentieth year is obliged to learn from the other—such a man can more easily attain the required stage and indeed at the age of thirty may reach a higher level than the first man who acquired his faculties in his early years. Anyone who observes life closely will find this to be the case. Faculties that a man has made his own possession may become shackles later on; whereas faculties that are not so intrinsically linked with the soul but have been acquired in a more external way are less liable to have that effect. In order that humanity may advance, provision has always to be made for two streams of civilization, one of which receives into itself the rudiments of certain faculties and elaborates them, while the development of the other, adjacent, stream is as it were held back. The one stream develops certain faculties to a suitable degree—faculties which are then essentially part of this stream and of the men belonging to it. Evolution proceeds, and something new appears; but the first stream would not be capable of rising to a higher stage through its own powers. Provision has therefore to be made for another stream to run side by side with it. This second stream remains in a certain respect undeveloped, having not nearly reached the level of the first; nevertheless it continues its course and is eventually able to benefit from the faculties acquired by the first. Having in the intervening period remained youthful, it is able, later on, to rise higher. Thus the one stream has fertilized the other. Spiritual streams must run their course side by side in this way in the evolution of humanity and provision must be made accordingly by the spiritual guidance of the world. In what way could it be ensured that side by side with the stream represented by the great Buddha a second stream should run its course and at a later time receive what Buddha had brought to mankind? This could only be achieved by withholding from the stream known as the ancient Hebraic, the possibility of producing human beings capable of developing Dharma out of their own moral nature, that is to say, capable of finding the teachings of the Eightfold Path for themselves. In this stream there could be no Buddha. What Buddha brought to his spiritual stream in the form of deep inwardness, the other stream had to receive from outside. As a particularly wise measure, therefore, and long before the appearance of Buddha, this people of the Near East was given the ‘Law’, not from within but from outside, in the Ten Commandments known as the Decalogue. The teaching imparted to another people as a possession of the inner life was given to the ancient Hebrew people in the Ten Commandments—a number of external Laws received from outside and not yet united with the soul. Hence by reason of their childlike stage of evolution the ancient Hebrews felt that the Commandments had been given to them from heaven. The Indian people had been taught to realize that men evolve Dharma, the Law of the Soul, from their inmost being; the Hebrew people were trained to obey the Law given them from without. In this way they formed a wonderful complement to what Zarathustra had accomplished for his own civilization and for all civilizations originating from it. Emphasis has been laid on the fact that Zarathustra directed his gaze to the outer world. Whereas Buddha gave deeply penetrating teachings concerning the ennoblement of man's inner nature, from Zarathustra came sublime teachings relating to the Cosmos, in order that men should be enlightened about the world out of which they are born. Buddha's gaze was directed inwards, Zarathustra's to the outer world, with the aim of understanding it through spiritual insight. Let us now concern ourselves with what Zarathustra bestowed upon humanity from the time when he appeared as the proclaimer of Ahura Mazdao until his life as Nazarathos. The depth and impressiveness of his teachings about the great spiritual laws and beings of the Cosmos steadily increased. What he had given to Persian civilization concerning the Spirit of the Sun amounted to no more than indications; but then these indications were amplified and elaborated into the wonderful Chaldean knowledge that is so little understood to-day—knowledge relating to the Cosmos and the spiritual causes governing birth and existence. If we study these cosmological teachings we find that they reveal one particularly significant characteristic. While teaching the ancient Persian people about the external spiritual causes of the material world, Zarathustra spoke of two Powers: Ormuzd and Ahriman or ‘Angra Manyu,’ who oppose one another throughout the Universe. But what may be called the element of moral fervour, moral warmth, would not have been found in this teaching. According to the ancient Persian view, man is enmeshed in the whole process of cosmic life. The struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman is waged in the human soul, and it is because of the battle between these two Beings that passions rage in man. There was as yet no knowledge of the inner nature of the soul; all the teaching related to the Cosmos. By ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were meant the beneficial or harmful workings which run counter to each other in the Cosmos and also come to expression in man. Moral conceptions were not yet included in teaching that was concerned essentially with the outer world. Man was made acquainted with the beings governing the material world, with everything that prevails in the world as a good, or as a sinister influence. He felt himself enmeshed in these forces but the moral element itself in which the soul participates was not yet inwardly experienced. When, for instance, a man was confronted by another of apparently ‘evil’ nature, he felt that forces from the evil beings of the world were streaming through him, that the other man was ‘possessed’ by these evil beings and moreover could not be held to blame for it. Human beings were felt to be entangled in a system of cosmic existence not yet permeated by moral qualities. That was the characteristic feature of a teaching primarily concerned with the outer world—viewed, of course, with the eyes of spirit. It was for this reason that the Hebrew teachings formed such a wonderful complement to the cosmological knowledge of the Persians, for they introduced the element of morality into revelations given from without, thus making it possible for the concept of ‘guilt’, of ‘human guilt’ to be imbued with meaning. Before the introduction of the Hebrew teaching, all that could be said of an evil man was that he was possessed by evil forces. The proclamation of the Ten Commandments made it necessary to distinguish between men who obeyed the Law and others who did not. Thus there arose the concept of human guilt. How it was introduced into the evolution of humanity can be grasped if we consider a record proving what a tragic uncertainty still prevailed as to the exact meaning of guilt. Study the Book of Job and you will discern the lack of clarity about the concept of guilt—the uncertainty as to what attitude a man should adopt when misfortune befalls him; there you will glimpse the dawning of the new concept of guilt. Thus the moral code was given to the ancient Hebrew people as a revelation from without—like the revelations concerning the kingdoms of Nature. This could only come about because Zarathustra had made provision for the continuation of his work, as I explained, by passing on his etheric body to Moses and his astral body to Hermes. Moses was thereby endowed with the faculty to perceive, as Zarathustra had perceived, the forces at work in the external world; but instead of experiencing neutral forces only, Moses became aware of the moral power holding sway in the world, the power that can take the form of commandment. Hence the element of obedience, submission to the Law, was implicit in the life and culture of the Hebrew people, whereas the ideal contained in the stream represented by Buddha was to give direction to man's inner life in the teachings of the Eightfold Path. But it was necessary that this Hebrew people should be preserved until the right time arrived—the time of the advent of the Christ-principle of which we are about to speak. The Hebrew people had to be ‘screened’ from Buddha's revelation and kept at a less mature stage of culture—if we like to call it so. Hence among the ancient Hebrews there were personalities who could not themselves, as human beings, be bearers of the full powers of an Individuality whose mission it was to represent the ‘Law’. A personality such as Buddha could not have appeared within the Hebrew people. The Law could be apprehended only through enlightenment from without—through the fact that Moses bore the etheric body of Zarathustra and was able to receive something that was not born of his own soul. To give birth to the Law from their own hearts was beyond the power of the Hebrew people. But it was essential, as in all other such cases, for the work of Moses to be carried onward and so bear fruit at the right time. Hence it was inevitable that there should arise among the ancient Hebrew people Individualities such as the Prophets and Seers, one of the most important of whom was Elijah. What is there to be said about a personality such as his? Elijah was destined to be one of the ruling figures in the régime inaugurated by Moses. But the folk-substance of the Hebrews could produce no human being able to represent the whole content of the Law of Moses—which could be received only as a revelation from above. What we described as being necessary in the ancient Indian epoch, also as the special nature of the Bodhisattva, had to be repeated again and again in the Hebrew people too: there had to be Individualities who were not wholly contained in the human personality; one part of their being was in the earthly personality and the other in the spiritual world. Elijah was an Individuality of this nature. Only part of his being was present in his personality on the physical plane; the Ego-hood of Elijah could not penetrate fully into his physical body. He must therefore be called a personality ‘filled with the Spirit’. A figure such as Elijah could not possibly be brought into existence through the normal forces by which other men are placed in the world. In the normal way the human being develops in the mother's body in such a way that through physical processes the Individuality who has been incarnated previously simply unites with the physical embryo. In the case of an ordinary man everything takes place as it were straightforwardly, without any intervention by forces outside the normal. This could not be so in the case of an Individuality such as Elijah. Other forces had to intervene, concerned with the part of the Individuality that reached into the spiritual world. His development was necessarily attended by influences working upon him from outside. Hence when such Individualities are incarnated they appear as men who are ‘inspired’, ‘impelled by the Spirit’. They appear as ecstatic personalities whose utterances far surpass anything that might issue from their normal intelligence. All the prophets in the Old Testament are figures of this kind. They are ‘impelled by the Spirit’; the Ego cannot always account for its actions. The Spirit lives in the personality and is sustained from outside. From time to time such personalities withdraw into solitude; the part of the Ego needed by the personality withdraws and inspiration comes from the Spirit. In certain ecstatic, unconscious states such a being is responsive to the inspirations from above. The man who lived as ‘Elijah’ was an outstanding example of this. The words uttered by his mouth and the actions performed by his hands did not proceed only from the part of his being actually present in his personality; they were manifestations of divine-spiritual Beings in the background. When this Individuality was born again he was to unite with the body of the child born to Zacharias and Elisabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah. But in him we have to do with an Individuality who in his earlier incarnations had not habitually developed or brought fully into operation all the forces present in the normal course of life. In the normal course of life the inner power or force of the Ego becomes active while the physical body of the human being is developing in the mother's womb. The Elijah-Individuality in earlier times had not descended deeply enough to be involved in the inner processes operating here. The Ego had not, as in normal circumstances, been stirred into activity by its own forces, but from outside. This was now to happen again. But the Ego was now farther from the spiritual world and nearer to the Earth, much more closely connected with the Earth than the Beings who had formerly guided Elijah. The transition leading to the amalgamation of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream was now to be brought about. Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside—the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus. This Being who on the one side was united with the Earth but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms ‘beyond’ the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus—this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the Ego-force of John the Baptist. Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. At certain times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; then the God spoke, filling his Ego with a force which could be communicated to the outer world. Now again a spiritual force was present—the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus; this force worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the Ego. But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the Ego of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the Ego of the former Elijah—now the Ego of John the Baptist—wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance.1 What may we now expect? Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth ‘God's words’, and the actions performed by his hands ‘God's actions’, it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the Ego of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha. This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect: ‘Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a man's worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man's worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, man's worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!’—Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because he emphasized the individual quality in men, saying: ‘Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.’ Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha's sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain. The Buddha, now in his Nirmanakaya, shed his radiance upon the Nathan Jesus-child and continued his preaching inasmuch as he let the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. These words were spoken under the inspiration of the Buddha and it is like a continuation of his former preaching when, for example, John says: ‘You who set so much store by your descent from those who in the service of the spiritual powers are called Children of the Serpent, and plead the Wisdom of the Serpent, who led you to this? You believe that you bring forth fruits of repentance when you merely say: We have Abraham to our father’ ... (now, however, John continues the actual preaching of Buddha) ... ‘Say not that you have Abraham to your father, but be good men, whatever your place in the world. A good man can be raised up from the stones upon which your feet tread. Verily, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham’ ... And then again he says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!’ Men came to him and asked: ‘Master, what shall we do?’—exactly as the monks once came to Buddha. All these sayings seem to be like utterances of Buddha himself, or a continuation of them. (See Luke III, 7–12). Knowing that these Beings appear on the physical plane at different turning-points of time, we learn to understand the unity of religions and the spiritual proclamations made to mankind. We shall not realize who and what Buddha was by clinging to tradition but by listening to how he actually speaks. Five to six hundred years before our era, Buddha preached the Sermon at Benares, but his voice has not been silenced. He speaks, although no longer incarnated, when he inspires through the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body. There we have a real indication of the ‘unity of religions!’ We must look for each religion at the right point in the evolution of humanity and seek for what is truly alive in it, not what is dead—for everything continues to develop. This we must learn to realize. To refuse to hear Buddha's utterances from the mouth of John the Baptist is like someone who had seen the seed of a rose-tree and later on, when the tree has grown and bears flowers, refuses to believe that the tree grew from the seed, insisting that it is something different! The truth is that what was once alive in the seed now blossoms in the rose-tree. And the living essence of the Sermon at Benares blossomed in the preaching of John the Baptist by the Jordan. We now know something of another Individuality of whom the Gospel of St. Luke speaks so impressively. Only by endeavouring to understand each word as it is really meant can knowledge of the Gospel be acquired. St. Luke tells us in his introduction that he will recount information given by ‘seers’. Such persons were able to perceive the conditions revealing themselves gradually in the course of the ages; they did not see merely what was happening on the physical plane in the immediate present. One who saw only that might say: In India, five or six hundred years before our era, there lived one called the ‘Buddha’, the son of King Suddhodana, and then, later on, there lived a man known as John the Baptist. Such a person would not, however, find the thread passing from the one to the other, for that is perceptible only in the spiritual world. St. Luke says, however, that his account is based on the evidence of actual ‘seers’. It is not enough merely to accept the words of these sacred records; we must learn to understand their true meaning. But for this purpose we must have clear pictures in our minds of the Individualities in question and be cognisant of all the elements that streamed into them. It has already been said that whatever may be the nature and rank of an Individuality who descends to the Earth, his development must be in conformity with the faculties available in the body in which he incarnates, and he must take these faculties and their character into account. If a Being of very lofty rank wished to descend to the Earth at the present time, he could not count upon finding bodily conditions other than those pertaining to a human organism of to-day. Recognition of who this Individuality actually is, is possible only in the case of a seer who perceives how the delicate threads of destiny are woven into his inmost nature. Such a Being, having attained a higher stage of wisdom, must however bring the body to maturity through childhood and onwards in such a way that at a particular point of time what that Being was in earlier incarnations can become manifest. If a Being is to awaken certain feelings in mankind the conditions of his earthly incarnation must be such that his body too is able to endure whatever is the object of his mission. In the spiritual world things do not present the same appearance as in the physical world. A Being whose mission it is to proclaim the possibility of the healing of pain and release from suffering must himself taste the very depths of suffering in order to find the right words applicable to it in the human sense. The Being who subsequently passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus was the bearer of a message to the whole of mankind. It was a message intended to lead men out of the narrow ties of blood-relationship prevailing hitherto. It was not to set aside the tie between father and son, brother and sister, but to add to the love inherent in blood-relationship the ‘universal’ love that flows from soul to soul and transcends all ties of blood. This deepened love that has nothing to do with kinship of blood was to be brought by the Being who manifested Himself later on in the body of the Nathan Jesus. For this purpose it was necessary that the Individuality who had dwelt since his twelfth year in the body of the Nathan Jesus should himself experience on Earth what it means to feel no ties, no relationship with others through the blood. Then only could this Being experience in all its purity the link between man and man. He had first to feel himself free from all ties of blood—free even from the possibility of such ties. The Individuality in the Nathan Jesus was to stand before the world not only as a ‘homeless’ man (like the Buddha who left his home for unknown domains) but as one liberated from all family connections and from everything associated with the tie of blood. He had to experience all the pain that can be felt when a man must bid farewell to everything that is near him, and stand alone; he had to speak from the experience of utter loneliness and the abandonment of all family ties. Who was this Being? We know that he was the Being who until about his twelfth year had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus, his father and mother having descended from the Solomon line. His father had died early, so the boy was orphaned on the father's side. Besides himself there were brothers and sisters in this family, and he lived with them as long as he (Zarathustra) was in the body of the Solomon Jesus. In his twelfth year he left this family, gave up mother, brothers and sisters, and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus. Then the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and, later on, the father too. Thus when the Zarathustra-Individuality went out to work in the world he had parted from everything connected with ties of blood. Not only was he completely orphaned, not only had he given up brothers and sisters, but as Zarathustra he had to forgo ever founding a family and having descendants. For he had abandoned not only his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, but even his own body, and had passed into another body—that of the Nathan Jesus. This Being could then prepare the way for One still more sublime, who later on, in the body of the Nathan Jesus, entered upon His great mission—the proclamation of Universal Love. And when the mother and brothers came and the people said to Him: ‘Thy mother and thy brethren are without and seek for thee’, then, from the depths of His soul and without danger of being misunderstood or of wronging filial love, He could utter the words: ‘That they are not!’ ... for Zarathustra had relinquished even the body that was connected with this family. Then, pointing to those who were with Him in free community of soul, He could say: "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (See Mark, III, 35.) The words of the scriptures are to be taken literally! In order that One Being might proclaim universal love He had actually to be incarnated in a form wherein He could experience the abandonment of everything that could be founded upon ties of blood. Our feelings go out to this Being as if He were humanly near us—a Being who, having descended from sublime heights of spirit underwent human experiences and human suffering. The more spiritual our conception of Him, the truer it will be, and the more fervently will our hearts and souls acclaim Him!
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Incarnation of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth
21 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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| 114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Incarnation of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth
21 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield |
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In the foregoing lectures we have tried to gain some idea of the most important figures in the Gospel of St. Luke. Although far-reaching conceptions of the facts underlying this Gospel have been acquired, it still remains for us to follow the further development of the central Being of our Earth—Christ Jesus Himself. To begin with it will be necessary to recall that Christ Jesus, as He is afterwards described in the Gospel of St. Luke, was born—or rather His physical body was born—as the Nathan Jesus of the House of David. At about his twelfth year there passed into the body of this child the Ego once incarnated in the Being who had been the inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Thus from the twelfth year onwards, the Ego of Zarathustra was living in the body of the Nathan Jesus, and we must now follow the development of this Being more closely, bearing in mind something for which our previous studies have prepared us. We know that in normal cases the first and second septenaries of human life are important periods of development; a third period follows, from puberty (the fourteenth year) to the twenty-first year; another from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth and again another from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. These divisions of time are not, of course, to be taken so pedantically that they are thought to end exactly at the ages specified, but when the second dentition takes place an important transition in the development of the human being occurs, approximately at the close of the seventh year. This transition does not come about suddenly, but gradually, during the period of the change of teeth. During the other periods too, the process is a gradual one. As is described in greater detail in my book >The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, the close of the seventh year is marked by a spiritual occurrence which in some respects resembles physical birth: a kind of etheric birth then takes place. In the fourteenth year, at puberty, there is an astral birth: the astral body of the human being becomes free. If followed with close attention and with the eyes of spirit, the development of the human being shows itself to be a very complicated process. Ordinary observation fails to notice many important differences in human life—differences which also become evident in more advanced years. It is usually thought that from a certain point of time onwards, few if any changes take place in the human being, but this idea arises from very rough and ready observation. The truth is that closer scrutiny can perceive certain differences taking place even in the later years of human life. When the physical environment of the mother's body is abandoned at birth, the part of the human being then born is really his physical body only; what comes to the fore during the first seven years is the physical body. In various lectures on the education of children the great importance of this knowledge for the teacher has been emphasized. Then, when the etheric sheath has been discarded, the etheric body is set free. Again, in the fourteenth year, when the astral sheath is discarded, the astral body is set free. Strictly speaking, however, the constitution of the human being cannot be fully understood unless the organization indicated in my book Theosophy is taken as a basis. There you will find that a further distinction is made in the soul-elements of human nature. Immediately connected with the life-body (etheric body) is what is called the sentient (astral) body which does not become completely free as regards the outer world until about the twenty-first year. Then what is called the sentient soul becomes gradually free. At the twenty-eighth year the intellectual or mind-soul (Gemütseele) becomes free, and later the spiritual soul (or consciousness-soul). This applies, to the human being of to-day. Observation of human life guided by spiritual science clearly reveals these stages of development. The great leaders and leading figures of humanity have also known why the thirty-fifth year is so important. Dante was aware why he made particular mention of his thirty-fifth year as the time when he had the visions set down in his great poem. At the very beginning of the Divine Comedy there is an indication to this effect. At the age of thirty-five man's being has progressed to the point where the can make full use of the faculties dependent upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul. Those who have spoken of man strictly in accordance with the process of evolution in the West have always recognized this classification. In Orientals the periods are not exactly the same. Hence in the case of Oriental civilization it was quite correct not to make the same classification as in the West where it has always been the right one. The Greeks, for instance, merely used different words to express what now concerns us. When speaking of the element of soul in man, they began with what we call the life-body (etheric body) and called it ‘treptikon’; for what we call the sentient (astral) body they used the very expressive word ‘aisthetikon’; our sentient soul they called ‘orektikon’; the intellectual or mind-soul, ‘kinetikon’, and the most precious possession now being acquired by man, the spiritual soul, they called ‘dianoetikon’. Such is the development of the human being when considered in detail. Owing to certain conditions that will become clearer to us to-day, the development of the Nathan Jesus was somewhat accelerated—a fact also rendered possible because in those regions puberty was reached at an earlier age. In the case of the Nathan Jesus there were very special reasons why the change usually occurring in the fourteenth year should take place in the twelfth. So too the other changes connected with the twenty-first, twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years came about in his nineteenth, twenty-sixth and thirty-third years respectively. This indicates in broad outline the development of the central Figure of our Earth. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] It must be borne in mind that up to the twelfth year the physical body was that of the Nathan Jesus, but that after the twelfth year the Ego of Zarathustra was living in that body. What does this mean? It means that from the twelfth year onwards, this mature Ego was working upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the mind-soul of the Nathan Jesus, elaborating these members in a way possible only to an Ego of great maturity—an Ego that had undergone the destinies of the Zarathustra-Individuality through many incarnations. We therefore meet with the wonderful fact that the Ego of Zarathustra passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus in the twelfth year of life and elaborated the faculties of the soul to the highest degree of excellence. Thus there developed a sentient body able to gaze into the Cosmos and experience something of the spiritual nature of Ahura Mazdao; there developed a sentient soul able to harbour the knowledge and wisdom based on the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao; and there developed a mind-soul able to apprehend, to formulate in intelligible concepts and words, that which men had hitherto been able to acquire only through spiritual currents flowing into them from outside. The Nathan Jesus, having within him the Zarathustra-Ego, lived on until his thirtieth year was approaching. The event that had occurred when he was twelve, when his inmost nature was filled with a new Egohood, now took place again—but this time on an infinitely more sublime, more universal scale. Towards the thirtieth year the Zarathustra-Ego had accomplished its work in the soul of the Nathan Jesus; the faculties of this soul had been developed to the highest possible degree and the mission of the Zarathustra-Ego was thus fulfilled. Having instilled into the soul all the faculties he had acquired through his own previous incarnations, Zarathustra could declare: ‘My task is now accomplished!’—and a moment came when his Ego left the body of the Nathan Jesus. The Zarathustra-Ego had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus until the twelfth year. No further development in earthly existence would thereafter have been possible for this boy. Because the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him, his development came to a standstill at the point reached at that time, although exceptional maturity had been attained owing to the presence of such a highly advanced Ego. Anyone observing the Solomon Jesus-child would have found him prematurely advanced to a conspicuous degree; but from the moment the Zarathustra-Ego left him he came to a standstill and could make no further progress. And when—comparatively soon—the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and the spiritual part of her being was translated into the spiritual world, she took with her what was of eternal value and formative power in the Solomon Jesus child. This child also died—at about the same time as the mother of the Nathan Jesus. It was an etheric sheath of utmost value which then left the body of the Solomon Jesus. As we know, the development of the etheric body takes place mainly between the seventh year of life and puberty. This was an etheric body that had been worked upon and elaborated by the forces of the Zarathustra-Ego. In normal human existence, when the etheric body leaves the physical body at death, everything that is of no eternal use is discarded and the human being takes with him a kind of extract of the etheric body. In the case of the child of the Solomon line the etheric body was of eternal use in the fullest possible sense and the whole life-body of this child was taken by the mother of the Nathan Jesus with her into the spiritual world. Now the etheric body forms and shapes the physical body of man and it is not difficult to realize that there was a very deep connection between this etheric body of the Solomon Jesus which had been translated into the spiritual world, and the Zarathustra-Ego; for this Ego and etheric body had been united until the twelfth year of earthly life. And when the Zarathustra-Ego left the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the power of attraction between this Ego and the original etheric body in the Solomon Jesus asserted itself. The maturity of the Zarathustra-Ego was such that a further passage through Devachan was unnecessary and after a comparatively short time this Ego was able, in conjunction with his former etheric body, to build up a new physical body. This resulted in the birth of the Being who thereafter appeared again and again, always with relatively short intervals between physical death and rebirth; whenever this Being left the physical body at death, he soon appeared again on the Earth in a new incarnation. Having sought and found the etheric body he had once relinquished in the circumstances indicated, this Being went on his way through history as the ‘Master Jesus’, becoming, as you can well imagine, the great helper of those who have endeavoured to understand the Event of Palestine. Thus it was the Zarathustra-Ego, Zarathustra himself, who having found his etheric body again began to move through the evolution of mankind as the Master Jesus, incarnating again and again to give guidance and direction to the spiritual stream of Christianity. He is the Inspirer of those who strive to understand Christianity in its living growth and development; within the esoteric schools he inspired those whose perpetual duty it was to cultivate the teachings of Christianity. He stands behind the great spiritual figures of Christianity, ever teaching what the great Event of Palestine signifies. Having indwelt the body of the Nathan Jesus from the twelfth to the thirtieth year, the Zarathustra-Ego was hence-forth outside that body and another Being descended into it. This happened, as all the Gospels relate, at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, when an Ego of untold sublimity entered into the Nathan Jesus in place of the Zarathustra-Ego. In the lectures on the Gospel of St. John,1 attention was drawn to the fact that ‘baptism’ in those olden days was something very different from the mere symbol which it became later on. It was also enacted differently by John the Baptist. The body of one who was baptized was completely submerged in the water. You know from preparatory lectures that a definite experience may be connected with such a happening. Even in everyday existence it may happen that when a man is in danger of drowning, or sustains a violent shock, a tableau of his life hitherto appears before him. This is because something that otherwise takes place only after death, occurs momentarily: the etheric body is lifted out of the physical body and is freed from its power. This happened to most of those who were baptized by John, and in a very special way to the Nathan Jesus. His etheric body was drawn out—and during that moment the sublime Being we call the Christ descended into his body. Thus from the time of the Baptism, the Nathan Jesus was filled with the Christ Being as is indicated in the words contained in the earlier Gospel records: ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—meaning: the Son of Heaven, the Christ, is now begotten—begotten of the all-pervading Godhead and received into the body and whole constitution of the Nathan Jesus who had been prepared to receive the seed from heavenly heights. ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—These were the words contained in the earlier manuscripts and this is how they ought still to stand in the Gospels. (Luke III, 22.) Who is this Being who united at that time with the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus? The Christ Being cannot be understood if we think of Earth evolution alone. The Christ is the Leader of those spiritual Beings who left with the Sun when it separated from the Earth and established for themselves this higher sphere of action in order to work upon the Earth from outside. If we think back to the pre-Christian period of Earth evolution, from the time of the separation of the Sun until the appearance of Christ, we must say: When men looked up to the Sun with mature faculties they would have recognized the truth of what Zarathustra taught, namely that the light and warmth streaming from the Sun are but the physical vestment of the spiritual Beings behind the Sun's light; for behind the physical phenomena are hidden the spiritual rays of power which stream from the Sun to the Earth. The Leader of all the Beings who send their beneficent influences from the Sun to the Earth is He who was later called Christ. In pre-Christian times, therefore, this Being was not to be sought on Earth but on the Sun. And Zarathustra rightly called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’, saying in effect: ‘On the Earth we do not find the Light-Spirit; but when we look up to the Sun we behold the spiritual Being—Ahura Mazdao—who has his habitation there. The light that streams to us is the body of the Sun-Spirit, Ahura Mazdao, even as the human physical body is the body of the human spirit. But in the course of great happenings in the Cosmos this sublime Being drew ever nearer to the Earth-sphere; His approach could be perceived more and more distinctly by clairvoyance, and was unmistakable when in the flame of lightning on Mount Sinai the revelations came to Moses, the great forerunner of Christ Jesus. What did these revelations to Moses signify? They signified that the Christ Being, while approaching the Earth, was revealing Himself—in reflection to begin with—as if in a mirror-image. Let us consider, in its spiritual aspect, the process in evidence at every full Moon. When we look at the full Moon we see the rays of the Sun in reflection. It is sunlight that streams towards us, only we call it moonlight because we see it reflected by the Moon. What Being did Moses behold in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai? He beheld the Christ! But just as the sunlight is not seen directly but reflected from the Moon, so did Moses see the Christ in reflection. And as we call the sunlight ‘moonlight’ when we see it reflected from the Moon, Christ was called at that time, Jahve, or Jehovah. Jahve or Jehovah is the reflection of the Christ before He Himself appeared on Earth. Christ announced Himself thus indirectly to a humanity as yet unable to behold Him in his immediate reality, just as the sun-light manifests itself through the rays of the Moon in the otherwise dark night of full Moon. Jahve or Jehovah is the Christ—but seen as reflected light, not directly. The faculties of human cognition and perception were to come within nearer and nearer range of the Christ. Having previously manifested His presence to the Initiates from the Cosmos, He was now Himself to tread the Earth for a season as a man among men. But this could not come to pass until the right time had arrived. That Christ is a reality has always been known wherever men have steeped themselves in the wisdom of the world, and because He has revealed Himself in so many different ways He has been called by diverse names. Zarathustra called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’ because He revealed Himself in the raiment of the Sun's light. The great Teachers of humanity in ancient India during the first period after the Atlantean catastrophe—the holy Rishis—had known full well of this Being, for they were Initiates. They knew too that in their epoch He was beyond the range of earthly wisdom and would be accessible to it only later on. Hence it was said that this Being was beyond the sphere of the seven Rishis. ‘Vishva Karman’ was the name given to Him. The Rishis taught of the Being whom they called ‘Vishva Karman’ and Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’. Vishva Karman and Ahura Mazdao were two of the names for this Being who was gradually approaching the Earth from heights of spirit, from cosmic realms. But preparation had to be made in the evolution of humanity to ensure the existence of a body fit to receive this Being. It was necessary for a Being such as had lived in Zarathustra to mature from incarnation to incarnation in order that in a body as pure as that of Jesus of Nazareth he could bring the faculties of the sentient body, of the sentient soul and of the mind-soul to the degree of perfection that would render this human being fit to receive into himself so sublime a Being. Such preparation had to be made. Before a sentient soul and a mind-soul could be adequately developed it was necessary that an Ego should first have undergone the many experiences and destinies of Zarathustra and then transform the faculties present in the Nathan Jesus. This would not have been possible at any earlier time, for the Nathan Jesus-child had to be worked upon not only by the Zarathustra-Ego but also by the lofty spiritual power we have characterized as the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. From the child's birth until his twelfth year this power worked chiefly from outside. But the Bodhisattva himself had had first to become Buddha before he was able to develop in himself the spiritual body, the Nirmanakaya, wherewith to work upon the Nathan Jesus during this period of his life. At the time of the incarnation in the course of which he was destined to become Buddha he had not yet acquired this power; the Buddha-life had first to be lived through. Some day, when humanity understands what deep wisdom has been preserved in many ancient legends, it will be found that everything deciphered from the Akashic Chronicle is contained in a wonderful way in those legends. We are told, and rightly told, that in ancient India too, men were taught of Christ as a cosmic Being beyond the sphere of the seven holy Rishis. The Rishis knew that He dwelt in lofty spiritual regions and was only gradually approaching the Earth. Zarathustra too knew that he must turn his gaze from the Earth to the Sun; and the ancient Hebrews, because of the faculties and attributes indicated in the last lecture, were the first people to whom the proclamation of the Christ Being in His reflection could be made. We are also told in a legend how the Bodhisattva, when about to become Buddha, came into spiritual contact with Vishva Karman—the Being who was later called Christ. The legend relates that when his twenty-ninth year was approaching the Bodhisattva made his famous exit from the palace where he had been strictly guarded and fostered. Then he saw, first, an old man, then a sick man, then a corpse, thus becoming gradually aware of the miseries of life. Then he saw a monk who had forsaken this life with its accompanying phenomena of old age, sickness and death. Thereupon—so it is related in this profoundly true legend—he resolved not to leave the palace immediately but to return once more. But during this first departure from the palace—so runs the legend—he was invested from spiritual heights with the power which the Divine Artificer, Vishva Karman, who appeared to him, sent down to the Earth. The Bodhisattva was invested with the power of Vishva Karman, of Christ. Thus for the Bodhisattva, Christ was a Being outside—not yet united with him. At that time the Bodhisattva too had nearly reached his thirtieth year but he could not then have made it possible for Christ to be received in the fullest sense into a human body. He had first to become sufficiently mature, and this stage was attained through his Buddha-existence. And when, later on, he appeared in the Nirmanakaya, his task was to make the body of the Nathan Jesus—in which he was not himself embodied—fit to receive Vishva Karman, the Christ. In this way the forces in earthly evolution had worked in concert to bring about the great Event. It is now on our lips to ask: What is the relationship of Christ, of Vishva Karman, to Beings such as the Bodhisattvas, of whom the Bodhisattva who afterwards became Buddha was one? This question brings us to the threshold of one of the greatest mysteries of Earth evolution. Generally speaking, it will be difficult for the feelings and perceptive faculties of men at the present time to have even an inkling of what lies behind this mystery. The mission of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha was to incorporate into humanity the principle of compassion and love. Twelve such Beings are connected with the Cosmos to which the Earth belongs. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha in the fifth/sixth century B.C. is one of these Twelve, all of whom have specific missions: Just as the mission of this particular Bodhisattva was to bring to the Earth the teaching of compassion and love, the other Bodhisattvas too have their missions which must be fulfilled in the different epochs of Earth evolution. Gautama Buddha's connection with the mission of the Earth is especially close inasmuch as the development of the moral sense is precisely the task of our own epoch—from the time when the Bodhisattva appeared five to six centuries B.C. to the time when the Bodhisattva who succeeded him in that office will live on Earth as the Maitreya Buddha. That is how Earth evolution advances; the Bodhisattvas descend and have to incorporate into evolution from time to time what constitutes the object of their mission. A survey of the whole of Earth evolution would reveal that there are twelve such Bodhisattvas. They belong to that great community of Spirits which from time to time sends one of the Bodhisattvas to the Earth as a special emissary, as one of the great Teachers. A Lodge of twelve Bodhisattvas is to be regarded as the Lodge directing all Earth evolution. The concept of ‘Teacher’ familiar to us at lower stages of existence can be applied, in essentials, to these twelve Bodhisattvas. They are Teachers, the great Inspirers of one portion or another of what mankind has to acquire. Whence do these Bodhisattvas receive what they have to proclaim from epoch to epoch?—If you were able to look into the great Spirit-Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas you would find that in the midst of the Twelve there is a Thirteenth—one who cannot be called a ‘Teacher’ in the same sense as the Bodhisattvas, but of whom we must say: He is that Being from whom wisdom itself streams as very substance. It is therefore quite correct to speak of the twelve Bodhisattvas in the great Spirit-Lodge grouped around One who is their Centre; they are wrapt in contemplation of the sublime Being from whom there streams what they have then to inculcate into Earth evolution in fulfilment of their missions. Thus there streams from the Thirteenth what the others have to teach. They are the ‘Teachers’, the ‘Inspirers’; the Thirteenth is himself the Being of whom the others teach, whom they proclaim from epoch to epoch. This Thirteenth is He whom the ancient Rishis called Vishva Karman, whom Zarathustra called Ahura Mazdao, whom we call the Christ. He is the Leader and Guide of the great Lodge of the Bodhisattvas. Hence the content of the proclamation made through the whole choir of the Bodhisattvas is the teaching concerning Christ, once called Vishva Karman. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five to six centuries before our era was endowed with the powers of Vishva Karman. The Nathan Jesus who received the Christ into himself was not merely ‘endowed’ but ‘anointed’—that is to say, permeated through and through by Vishva Karman, by Christ. This mystery was portrayed in a symbol or in a picture wherever men had an inkling of the great secrets of evolution or acquired knowledge of them through Initiation. In the little known, enigmatic Trottic Mysteries of Northern Europe before the coming of Christianity, an earthly symbol of the spiritual reality of the Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas was created. Those who were Teachers were always associated with a community of twelve. It was for the Twelve to proclaim the message and there was a Thirteenth who did not teach but who through his very presence radiated the wisdom which the others received. This was the picture on Earth of a heavenly, spiritual reality. Again, in Goethe's poem Die Geheimnisse2 where the poet has given an indication of his Rosicrucian inspiration, we are reminded how Twelve sit around a Thirteenth who is not necessarily a great Teacher. Brother Mark, in his simplicity, is himself to be addressed by the Twelve as the Thirteenth—when the former Thirteenth shall have left them. He is to be the bringer, not of teaching, but of the spiritual substance itself. And it was the same wherever an inkling or actual knowledge of this lofty spiritual fact existed among men. The Baptism by John in the Jordan marked the point of time in the evolution of humanity when this heavenly ‘Thirteenth’—as spiritual substance itself—appeared on the Earth. This was the Being of whom all others—Bodhisattvas and Buddhas—had had to teach, and for whose descent into a human body such stupendous preparations had been necessary. That is the mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan. The Being is He who is described in the Gospels: Vishva Karman, Ahura Mazdao, or the Christ as He was called later on when in the body of the Nathan Jesus. As Christ, this Being was to tread the Earth in human form for three years, a man among men, within that purified terrestrial Being who up to his thirtieth year had undergone all the experiences of which we have heard in these lectures. The Being formerly hidden in the light- and warmth-giving rays of the Sun streaming down from the Cosmos, the Being, that is, who had gone with the Sun when it separated from the Earth, now descended into the Nathan Jesus. We may now ask another question: Why was the union of this Being with the evolution of humanity on the Earth so long postponed? Why had He not descended at an earlier time to the Earth. Why had He not penetrated before into a human etheric body, as He did at tlhe Baptism by John in the Jordan? This will be intelligible to us if we grasp the nature of the happening described in the Old Testament as the ‘Fall into Sin’. During the epoch of ancient Lemuria, certain beings insinuated themselves into the human astral body—they were beings who had remained at the stage of Old Moon evolution. The human astral body was permeated at that time by the Luciferic beings and this is presented pictorially as the Fall into Sin in Paradise. Because these forces penetrated into his astral body, man became more deeply entangled in the things of the Earth than would otherwise have been the case. Had he not been subject to the Luciferic influence he would have been less deeply entangled in earthly matter. Consequently he descended to the Earth earlier than was originally intended. Now if nothing else had intervened, if nothing had taken place except what has just been indicated, the Luciferic forces anchored in the human astral body would have taken effect in the etheric body as well. But it was essential for the cosmic Powers to take special measures to prevent this. In the book Occult Science—an Outline3 the subject is dealt with from a different aspect. Man might not remain as he was after the Luciferic forces had penetrated into his astral body. He had to be protected against the effect of the forces upon his etheric body. This end was achieved at that time by making it impossible for him to use the whole of his etheric body, part of it being removed from his arbitrary control. If this beneficent deed of the Gods had not been accomplished, if man had retained power over the whole of his etheric body, he could never have found his right path through Earth evolution. Certain parts of the human etheric body had at that time to be withdrawn in order to be preserved for later times. Let us try to picture what this means. Man's physical body—as everything else that is physical—is composed of the elements also to be found in the world outside: the ‘earthy’ or solid, the ‘watery’ or fluid, and the ‘airy’ or gaseous. The etheric realm begins with the first state of ether—the ‘fire-ether’ or simply ‘fire’. Fire or warmth, regarded by modern physics merely as motion and non-substantial, is the first state of the ether. The second is the ‘light-ether’, or simply ‘light’. And the third state—sound, tone, or number—is one that is not revealed to man in its original form at all; it is only a reflection, as it were a shadow of this ether that can be perceived in the physical world as tone or sound. Behind external ‘sound’, however, there lies something of a finer etheric nature, something spiritual. Physical tone or sound is a mere phantom of spiritual tone, of ‘sound-ether’ or also ‘number-ether’. The fourth etheric realm is the ‘life-ether’—that which underlies actual ‘life’. As physical man is constituted to-day, everything that is of the nature of soul expresses itself in his physical and etheric constitution, but is also connected with certain etheric substances. What we call ‘will’ expresses itself etherically in what we call ‘fire’. Anyone who is at all sensitive to certain sentient experiences will be aware that there is justification for saying that the will, which expresses itself physically in the blood, lives in the fire-element of the etheric; physically, the will expresses itself in the blood, that is to say in the movement of the blood. What we call ‘feeling’ expresses itself in the part of the etheric body that corresponds to the light-ether. Because this is so, a clairvoyant sees the will-impulses of a man flashing like flames through his etheric body and raying into his astral body; and he sees the feelings as forms of light. But the thinking that is experienced by man in his soul as his own, and expressed in words, is only a phantom of thinking—as you will readily believe, because physical sound too is only a phantom of something higher. Words have their organ in the sound-ether; our thoughts underlie our words; words are forms of expression for thoughts. These forms of expression fill etheric space inasmuch as they send their vibrations through the sound-ether; ‘tone’ or ‘sound’ is only the shadow of the actual thought-vibrations. The inner essence of all our thoughts, that which endows our thoughts with meaning (Sinn), actually belongs; in respect of its etheric nature, to the life-ether itself. Meaning (Sinn).................... Life-Ether Feeling............................Light-Ether In the Lemurian epoch, after the onset of the Luciferic influence, of these four forms of ether only the two lower (light-ether and fire-ether) were left at the free, abitrary disposal of man; the two higher kinds of ether were withdrawn from him. That is the inner meaning of the passage where it is said that when, as a result of the Luciferic influence, men had become able to distinguish between good and evil (pictorially expressed as eating of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’), the ‘Tree of Life’ was kept out of their reach. That is to say, the power freely and arbitrarily to penetrate the thought-ether and the sense-ether (‘meaning’-ether) was withdrawn from them. The conditions of man's development were therefore necessarily as follows. His will was given into his power to assert as his ‘personal’ expression; the same applies to his feelings. Both feeling and will are at man's personal disposal. Hence the individual character of the world of feeling and the world of will. This individual character, however, ceases immediately we pass from feeling to thinking—yes, even to the expression of thoughts, to the words on the physical plane. Whereas each man's feeling and will are personal, we immediately come into something universal when we rise into the realm of words and the realm of thoughts. No one individual can form thoughts that are his alone. If thoughts were as individual as feelings we should never understand one another. Thus thought and ‘meaning’ (Sinn) were withheld from the power of arbitrary human will and preserved for the time being in the world of the Gods, in order not to be given to man until a later time. Everywhere on the Earth, therefore, we can find individual men with individual feelings and individual impulses of will; but thinking is uniform everywhere and language is uniform among the several peoples. Where there is a common language, there reigns a common Folk-Deity. This sphere is withheld from the arbitrary power of man, remaining for the time being a field into which the Gods work. When Zarathustra, with his pupils around him, spoke of the realm of spirit, he could say: ‘Out of heaven there streams down warmth, or fire; out of heaven there streams down light. These are the vestments of Ahura Mazdao. But behind these vestments is hidden that which has not yet descended but has remained above in spiritual heights, casting only a shadow in the physical thoughts and words of men.’ Behind the warmth and light of the Sun is hidden that which lives in tone or sound, in meaning, manifesting itself only to those who are able to see behind the light that which is related to the earthly word as the heavenly Word is related to the part of Life that was withheld for the time being from humanity. Hence Zarathustra said: ‘Look upwards to Ahura Mazdao; see how He reveals Himself in the physical raiment of light and warmth. But behind all that is the Divine, Creative Word—and it is approaching the Earth!’ What is Vishva Karman? What is Ahura Mazdao? What is Christ in His true form? The Divine, Creative Word! Hence in Zarathustra's teaching the momentous communication is made that he was initiated in order not only to apprehend in the light the Being he called Ahura Mazdao, but also the Divine, Creative Word, Honover—which was to descend to the Earth and for the first time did descend into an individual etheric body at the Baptism by John. The Divine-Spiritual Word which had been preserved since the Lemurian epoch came forth from ethereal heights at the Baptism by John and entered into the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus. And when the Baptism was completed, what was it that had happened? The Word had become Flesh! What had Zarathustra, or those who had knowledge of his Mysteries, proclaimed? As seers they had proclaimed the ‘Word’ that is hidden behind the warmth and the light. They were ‘servants of the Word’. And the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke recorded what the ‘seers’ proclaimed—those who had become ‘servants of the Word’. This example again shows us that the Gospels must be taken literally. What had been withheld from men for so long because of the Luciferic influence, became flesh in a single personality, descended to the Earth and lived on the Earth. Hence this Being is the great prototype of all those who by degrees will understand His nature. Our wisdom on Earth must follow the lead of the Bodhisattvas, whose unceasing task it is to proclaim the Thirteenth among them. All spiritual science, all our wisdom, all our knowledge, must be devoted to understanding the nature of Vishva Karman, of Ahura Mazdao, of CHRIST.
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